TANITA Museum
TANITA Museum is a venue designed to showcase a wide variety of body weighing ("bathroom") scales and other types of products used to "measure health" commercialized by TANITA Corporation since its foundation. A visit here provides knowledge of the steadily growing attention being devoted to health in today's world, as well as the evolution in devices used to gauge human fitness that have emerged hand in hand with such interest and concern.
http://www.tanita.com/en/worldwide/
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1946
The history of TANITA dates back to 1923, when Karoku Tanida opened a shop to manufacture and sell precious metal jewelry and other items in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. In 1944, Karoku's younger brother Iwaji established TANITA MUSENDENKI SEISAKUSHO in the company's present location, commencing production of communications equipment components. That business served as the true starting point for TANITA as a corporate entity. In 1946, soon after the end of World War II, the company changed its name to TANITA MFG.CO.,LTD., setting out to manufacture and market brass cigarette cases and lighters, clothes hangers and numerous other goods. Among the company's many offerings, TANITA advanced into the toaster market from early on, serving as a supplier of OEM products for major electrical appliance manufacturers. At that time, the electric heater accounted for slightly less than 70% of TANITA's total domestic market share in Japan.
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1959
This was the year that President Tanida traveled to the United States to search for products that would sell year-round and generate profit in place of electric heaters. He purchased so-called "bathroom scales" for measuring people's weights at local department stores, carrying them back to Japan where they were commercialized for domestic use. This led to the launch of innovative bathroom scales featuring bold red designs, which grew to become a leading member of the TANITA product lineup.
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1968
As greater numbers of Japanese came to purchase their own residences, there was accompanying growth in homes equipped with baths. Health consciousness grew even stronger, with the nation entering an era defined by "one bathroom scales per home." In 1968, cumulative sales of bathroom scales reached the one-million-unit mark. Just 11 years later, in 1979, those sales had expanded 10-fold to 10 million units.
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1992
Based on advice from physicians that as a barometer of good health, in addition to body weight "body fat" was also important, TANITA was developed a "body-fat scale." With this breakthrough, it became possible to measure one's body fat ratio simply by stepping onto a bathroom scale. At first, such devices sold for a whopping price of 485,000 yen. Just two years later, however, a model available for 45,000 yen was marketed.
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2003
More and more companies entered the health appliance field, with price competition truly heating up. TANITA responded with development of products equipped with multiple functions. This paved the way to the birth of the "body composition monitor" which, in addition to body weight and body-fat ratio, was also capable of simultaneously measuring muscle mass, visceral fat and other physical states.
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2004
This year heralded development of the world's first "segmental body composition monitor" - a unit capable of taking measurements of individual body segment composition in addition to composition of the body as a whole. The body composition monitor lineup also included units specialized for women, with certain types designed to remind users of the proper timing for going on diets. For pregnant and nursing mothers, meanwhile, TANITA also commercialized a version making it possible to view the measured values without bending over.
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2010
In recent years, along with equipment used to gauge health, the TANITA name has also come to be associated with the book TANITA's Cafeteria (published by Daiwa Shobo). Another volume,series of recipes entitled Recipe Book TANITA's Cafeteria -500 kcal Set Lunch-, became a bestseller to the tune of over 5.42million copies.
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2012
To address the surge in requests to dine at the TANITA Company Cafeteria, a separate TANITA Cafeteria was opened in the Marunouchi district of Tokyo this year. Proving particularly popular at that eatery have been dishes prepared to yield excellent balances of calories and nutrition. As of 2016, menus have been developed for company and student cafeterias in 26 different locations, with plans to expand these efforts to all of Japan's 47 prefectures in the near future.
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2013
More recent developments have included commercialization of products built to automatically record measured data in SD cards, followed by transmission to personal computers, smartphones and other information devices. It has also become possible to upload such data on the Internet for more detailed processing and management. In this way, the company continues to bring products to market closely attuned to today's continuously diversifying and sophisticated needs.