Koden Brand Guidelines: The 1947 Tokyo Maker of Radars, Echo Sounders and Sonar

A 1947 Tokyo start in radio direction finding.

Koden Electronics, in Japanese Kōden Seisakusho, was founded in Tokyo in 1947. The company’s own history says it was set up by the engineer Yoji Ito, together with a group of engineers, with the aim of turning their electronics know-how to civilian use. Its first premises were in Meguro, Tokyo. Japanese Wikipedia adds that the founding engineers also came from the Ministry of Communications and from the international telecommunications company of the day, and English Wikipedia describes the young firm as an affiliate of JRC, Japan Radio Company.

Its first product was a radio direction finder for boats. Koden says the device helped Japan’s fishing fleets navigate and bring in larger catches at a time of severe food shortages, and that it spread quickly through the fleet. The company completed a factory in Meguro in 1957 and built a second plant at Uenohara, in Yamanashi Prefecture, in 1965; Japanese Wikipedia still lists Uenohara as a company site.

Koden also has a place in Japanese computing. The company says that in 1957 it built a prototype computer using parametrons, a Japanese logic element, instead of vacuum tubes, and that in 1960 it developed a scientific computer, the KODIC-401. Through the following decades it moved into Loran navigation receivers, synchronised sonar and colour displays. Koden describes its colour echo sounder and its marine colour radar as the first of their kind anywhere, and says its radar was the first marine-electronics product in Japan to receive the G Mark good-design award. It also says it was developing GPS equipment for boats before the full satellite constellation was in orbit, and that more recently it developed Japan’s first three-dimensional panoramic plotter.

Radar, echo sounders and sonar.

Koden’s marine catalogue is organised around three instrument families, as the company lists them in 2026. Its MDC radars run from compact 4 kW sets with a 2 ft radome and an 8.4-inch colour screen up to 25 kW open-array models with 6 or 9 ft antennas and 19-inch screens, and several come as “black box” versions that drive a vessel’s own monitor. Its CVS colour echo sounders come in standard and broadband types with basic ranges the company gives as up to 3,000 metres, and its sonar line includes the KDS black-box sonars and the 10.4-inch ESR-145. Alongside them sit GPS and GNSS compasses, chart plotters, multifunction displays, Class B AIS and products built to IMO requirements.

Much of the range reaches the United States through partners. In May 2011 Newsday reported that Si-Tex Marine Electronics of Riverhead, New York, had won a contract to sell and service Koden products and to provide U.S. customer support for the Tokyo company; the two firms said in a joint release that many of the recreational products Si-Tex sold were made at Koden facilities in Japan. In November 2011 MarineLink carried the announcement of the Koden MDC-2500BB black-box radar in four configurations from 4 to 25 kW, aimed at large yachts, workboats and commercial fishing boats.

The company widened its radar business in 1999, when, by its own account, it took over the radar business of Anritsu. It had opened a European sales office in Frankfurt in 1973, and Japanese Wikipedia lists subsidiaries in Germany, the United States and Singapore. Away from the sea, Koden makes an ultrasonic drilling monitor for foundation work and a laser docking ranger used when large tankers berth, and it says its ground-penetrating radar became known through surveys of pyramids in Egypt.

Marine electronics and satcom.

Marine electronics and satellite-communications companies tend to present themselves through their equipment first. Their websites lead with product photographs of radars, chartplotters, sonar displays, antennas and satellite terminals, usually shown on a plain background or mounted on a mast, a wheelhouse roof or a radar arch. Domes and displays are shot from the same few angles so that a whole range reads as one family, and model names, sizes and frequency bands do much of the descriptive work.

Coverage is the second recurring image. Satellite-service providers and antenna makers publish coverage maps for each network or plan, from regional cellular zones to global satellite beams, and many now show several networks side by side as low-orbit services join older geostationary ones. Bridge and wheelhouse photography carries the human side: officers at consoles, screens glowing in a dark bridge, yachts at anchor, fishing boats and offshore vessels at work.

Airtime and connectivity plans are a large part of how these companies describe themselves. Data allowances, subscription terms, crew-internet packages and backup services are laid out in plan tables, named and grouped the way each company chooses, and a hardware maker may sell plans on its own network next to those of other operators. Network-management software, cyber security services and content for crews increasingly sit alongside the hardware.

Partner pages complete the picture. Dealer and installer networks, service points in ports, and the satellite operators and equipment makers a company works with are listed with their own names and marks. This guide describes each company’s identity from dated sources and the company’s own pages, and the colours and typefaces shown are unofficial interpretations rather than reproductions of any mark.

A Tokyo engineering company inside a holding group.

In 1989, the company’s history says, Koden merged with and then spun off Harmonic Drive Systems, the precision-gear maker that Japanese Wikipedia still lists among related companies. In August 2014 Koden moved to a holding-company structure and became part of KODEN Holdings, according to Japanese Wikipedia. The marine company is headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, and in 2025 it opened a Tokyo office in Kamata, by its own account. In 2016 it began joint research with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and with Germany’s Heinrich Hertz Institute for communications technology; Japanese Wikipedia notes that Koden supplied technology for recovering the capsule of the Hayabusa2 asteroid probe.

Koden’s public face is that of an instrument maker. Its website opens on product families, from radar and echo sounder to sonar and navigation, with model numbers, screen sizes, output power and range figures set out plainly, and its corporate pages tell the company story period by period from 1947. The line on its English home page ties its work since 1947 to radio, sound and optical technology. Its news pages list the trade shows where the range is displayed, among them METSTRADE in Amsterdam and the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle in November 2026, and the site also carries distributor lists, a general brochure and product videos.

For a design guide, Koden shows how a long-running Japanese engineering firm can let specification and lineage carry the identity: dense model codes, plain figures and a dated history in place of lifestyle imagery. Compare Furuno, another Japanese marine-electronics maker, and Raymarine. For this guide we use a deep harbour navy, an echo green and a warm signal orange with a clean technical sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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