IWATA CORPORATION

あIWATA CORPORATION
ONCompany ProﬁleIWATA CORPORATION

Corporate Philosophy - Three Corporate Principles
Founded in 1920 as Iwata Matrix Co., Ltd., Iwata Corporation is rooted in the tradition ofmetal type. Through the decades, we have passed through the era of phototypesetting into
the digital age, incorporating emerging technologies to create Japanese fonts of the very
highest elegance dignity etc.
Our predecessors established three principles that continue to guide our type design today:- Excellent readability that is easy on the eyes
- Beautiful and elegant appearance- Uniform expression based on set rules that avoids self-indulgence
Following these principles, Iwata has developed fonts to ever higher degrees of perfection
through the years. Our most recent innovation is the development of an entirely new
category: the world’ s ﬁrst UD fonts (based on the universal design concept ), which areeasier for the middle-aged and seniors to read. These new fonts have received strong
public support.
Iwata Corporation is a comprehensive font manufacturer that combines tradition with thespirit of innovation.

ああIWATA CORPORATION

Corporate DataCompany Name IWATA CORPORATION
Establishment

1920

Capital40 million yen

President

Akira Mizuno

Work Contents
Retail Fonts,OEM Fonts,Custom Fonts
Corporate Fonts,Convert Font Formats,Consulting
Webwww.iwatafont.co.jp (in Japanese)
www.iwatafont.com/en/ (in English)
Head Ofﬁce
Address
Takisei Bldg 3-2-9 Iwamotocho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0032 Japan
Yamagata Ofﬁce
Address
2-7-8 Higashi-honcho, Tendo, Yamagata 994-0026 Japan

Main Customer
Panasonic Corporation, NEC Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Sony Corporation,
NEC Nexsolutions, Ltd., NEC Solution Innovators, Ltd., Canon Inc.,TOSHIBA CORPORATION, CASIO COMPUTER CO., LTD.,Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, EAST Co., Ltd., Nikon Corporation,Dainippon Printing Co., Ltd., TOPPAN PRINTING CO., LTD.,NTT COMWARE CORPORATION, Mitsumura Tosho Publishing Co., LTD.,Fontworks Inc., Media Technology Japan Co., Ltd., IBM Japan, Ltd.,Canon IT Solutions Inc., SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD., CELSYS,Inc.,
LIM Corporation Ltd., The Hokkaido Shimbun Press, SANKEI LIVING SHIMBUN Inc.,The Yomiuri Shimbun, The Asahi Shimbun Company, The Chunichi Shimbun,
The Nishinippon Shimbun, OITA GODO SHIMBUN INC., The Kobe Shimbun,
The Chugoku Shimbun, The Kyoto Shimbun Newspaper Co.,Ltd., and others

IWATA CORPORATION

Corporate History
Foundation to 1920s
1920 In November, Hyakuzo Iwata founded Iwata Matrix Co., Ltd. in Kyobashi
Kobiki-cho of Tokyo and began production of matrix.
1932 Received orders of over one million matrices in total from Manchurian State.
Most printed materials in Manchurian State were pressed with letters formedby matrices made by Iwata Matrix Co.
1947 Built its new factory in Omori, Tokyo and hired more employees.
In October, got incorporated as Iwata Matrix Works Corporation.

1950 In March, introduced two Benton engravers made by Tsugami Works,
for the ﬁrst time as a Japanese matrix foundry.
1966 Developed the original form of Iwata textbook typeface in reference tonotices from the Ministry of Education. It was designated as the standard
type in the industry.
1969 Began manufacturing and selling molds for letters and special types used
for ofﬁce equipment, accounting machines, adders and kanji teletypewriters,
and iron types for western typewriters, etc.

1979 Developed fonts for digital text based on the original Benton typefaces,
for which the Company received an order of a set of 48-dot Gothic JIS code
fonts from Hitachi, Ltd. (design laboratory of Central Research Laboratory).
This marked our ﬁrst digital data sales.
1988 In April, by spinning off its Digital Font Division, established Iwata Engineering
Corporation in Tendo, Yamagata. The Company introduced Ikarus typography
software made by URW (Germany) and started producing outline fonts anddotted fonts.
2001 Iwata Engineering Corporation and Iwata Matrix Works merged to form a newcompany, Iwata Corporation.

2006 Jointly developed Iwata UD (universal design) Font with Panasonic Corporationfrom the viewpoint of universal design. The font is used for text on all Panasonicproducts as its corporate font. Iwata also released the font under the name of
Iwata UD Font, making it the ﬁrst commercially available universal design font inthe world.
2014 The Company joined as a partner the Adobe-Google joint development project ofan open source Pan-CJK font family, Source Han Sans, and contributed to theextension of glyphs. In 2017, Source Han Serif was developed.
2020 100th anniversary

2020.10.08