Say the name Casio, and people will usually have a story to tell — often a memory involving a first watch or a synthesizer that they played with while growing up.
It was 1986 when Haider Kareem, a Casio watch collector who posts on Instagram as vintagecasios, got his first Casio: a W50U World Time.
“I was fascinated by its ability to track different time zones, and to this day, I still have it,” said Mr. Kareem, who lives in the English county of Oxfordshire. “That watch sparked a lifelong appreciation for Casio’s innovation and practicality.” Today, he owns more than 300 Casios.
There is a place in Tokyo where fans can take a trip down Casio’s own memory lane: the Toshio Kashio Memorial Museum of Invention, a Western-style house filled with inventions by the Kashio brothers, the founders of the company. (Mr. Kareem said the museum was on his itinerary for a trip to Tokyo in May; he missed it during a previous one because he didn’t realize that reservations were required, even though entry was free of charge.)
A Casio Playground
On a recent wintry day, I headed to the museum, which stands in the affluent Seijo neighborhood of western Tokyo. Although I have lived in the same general area for several years, I had no idea the museum existed: There are some small signs that I had overlooked and the two-level concrete house sits well back from the street, surrounded by a large garden that is now a public park.
“This is where Toshio Kashio used to live,” said Akira Watanabe, referring to the second of the four Kashio brothers. Mr. Watanabe is in corporate communications at Casio Computer Co. and as visitors are accompanied by guides, he was acting as mine on this particular day. (Casio takes an interest in the museum, but the attraction is financed and managed by the Toshio Kashio Memorial Foundation.)
The house was built in 1972, and enlarged in 1986 to total almost 930 square meters (about 10,000 square feet), with Toshio himself designing its interior. “After his death in 2012,” Mr. Watanabe said, “his house has been turned into a public facility with the things he invented, and the sights he saw when he started inventing.”
Casio as it is known today was founded in 1957, using a variation of the Kashio family name. Eventually Tadao, the eldest, was in charge of finance and management; Toshio’s role was to invent (company history says he decided to become an inventor after reading about Thomas Edison); Kazuo took care of sales and Yukio, the youngest, did product design and production. “The four brothers worked and managed well together,” Mr. Watanabe said.
Toshio, who obtained 313 patents for his inventions, began his career by creating the yubiwa pipe, a ring-like cigarette holder that allowed users to smoke all the way to the filterless end — a popular device in postwar Japan because tobacco was costly.
Its success financed the company’s first calculator, a desk-size electrical device introduced in 1957. One is displayed in the first room of the museum, which generally has a traditional exhibition format with displays accompanied by information cards and photographs.
“The calculator is the entire desk,” Mr. Watanabe said as he pressed a few keys, setting off an impressive series of flashing lights and numbers. After a few seconds, and work by 341 small electric switches inside, the calculation was displayed in illuminated figures. Its price was 485,000 yen, about the cost of a car at the time, so most were sold to companies and government offices.
As a visitor walks further into the museum, the calculators on display have more and more features (some include a clock; others play music, tell fortunes or play games) and become smaller and smaller. One is a credit card-size calculator that is just 8/10ths of a millimeter (0.03 of an inch) thick, invented in 1983 (That was a big year for Casio, with the introduction of the cult favorite G-Shock watch). “Today many visitors to the museum bring their credit card calculator to show us,” Mr. Watanabe said.
And there are the watches. One room displays several that Toshio invented, including in 1974 the Casiotron, a digital automatic calendar wristwatch that has been reintroduced several times, most recently in 2024 to mark its 50th anniversary. “He was always looking for the next hit product,” Mr. Watanabe said, “and used calculator technology to produce watches.” That technology was used, for example, to make automatic calendar adjustments in the original Casiotron design.
Multifunction watches from the 1980s, including the iconic Casio calculator watch still sold today for a modest $20, also are shown. Some could retain phone numbers; others, calculate temperature, altitude and air pressure. One model, called the Janus Reed Sensor, allowed the wearer to draw numbers on it with a finger.
Yuta Akuto, a Japanese watch enthusiast, visited the museum in January 2024. “I really liked it because you can see not only watches, but the whole history of the Casio company,” he wrote in an email.
I was fascinated by the 1987 DBA 80/800 phone dial watch, which can dial a number at a public phone booth (“It still works today,” said Mr. Watanabe — if you can find a public phone), and the TV remote watch that can change channels. The 2000s saw some models that could play MP3’s and take digital photos, although they have been discontinued.
“All that was before current smartwatches,” Mr. Watanabe said. “Casio is not in the smartwatch business, as we would not be able to show our uniqueness in a smartwatch. We want to produce digital gear that has value in itself.” Today, about 60 percent of Casio’s sales are digital and analog watches.
And finally came the music instruments display. “Toshio loved music and wanted to play instruments like violin and shakuhachi but struggled,” Mr. Watanabe said, referring to a type of traditional Japanese flute. “He wanted to help people who struggled like him so everyone could enjoy music.”
The room included the small synthesizer that many people likely had in the 1980s and 1990s. (“A big hit in the U.S.A.,” Mr. Watanabe said). Other items included a bulky digital guitar (which never needed tuning) and a digital saxophone (which had issues with saliva), neither of which are produced any more.
My visit ended in Toshio’s study, a large room equipped with amplifiers about five feet tall, plush leather furniture and a large window that offered a spectacular view of the serene garden and pond. Several papers written in his own hand were scattered on his desk, which was positioned in a corner.
Mr. Watanabe said that Toshio liked to do everything, including writing the catalog copy for his products. He worked until the very end of his life, often staying up all night in his study or experimenting in the kitchen, until he died at 87.
The post Museum Acts as Casio’s Own Memory Lane appeared first on New York Times.
