This leaves me with more questions than answers, how did these three companies come up with the idea of using that logo? Did they just independently arrive at same design (seems unlikely)? And how did the trademark registration process go for the second and third companies that registered it?
Turns out they used to be one conglomerate, but World War II changed that [0]:
> The Mitsubishi Group traces its origins to the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company that existed from 1870 to 1946. The company, along with other major zaibatsu, was disbanded during the occupation of Japan following World War II by the order of the Allies. Despite the dissolution, the former constituent companies continue to share the Mitsubishi brand and trademark.
I used to think it's cool the same company makes a pencil and an F-16 derivative ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_F-2 ), but alas, the pencilmaker is not the same company.
These pages[0][1] has more details. The families had three different emblems to start. The zaibatsu came up with the now famous three diamond design in in 1873[2], but there were no trademark laws until 1884, and many companies proceeded to use the logo. The pencil company first registered this in 1903. The zaibatsu finally got to it in 1914, but the earlier filing by the pencil company was honoured.
As for the cider company, sounds like they've been selling it like it since 1913[2], but registered it in 1919? My guess is that since it was a regional product with the product type in the name that's already established (like [3]), they allowed it.
The Kanji for Mitsubishi is 三菱, which literally means “three rhombus”. It is possible that they were independently invented, but the hypothesis on family crest crossovers still feels more likely
The design is much older in east asia, I've seen it on 19th century textiles and pottery for sure but I suspect it goes back a lot more than that.
The shape is somehow associated with the name mitsubishi, possibly through visual or phonetic punning that is common in pictogram-based writing systems and tonal languages. Mitsubishi the name is more widespread than this one family or this group of companies, and the symbol appears to have long associated with the name per se rather than this specific mitsubishi. Mitsu sounds like three, I don't know what the rhombus connection is.
That shade of red has a specific proper name in japanese (think like alice blue in english) and has long been associated with japan by the japanese.
I don't think any of this is a coincidence there's a connection between all this stuff. But I don't know what it is and I don't think the article author does either.
> a specific proper name in japanese (think like alice blue in english)
I hadn't heard of that one [0], the example that comes to mind is "Canary Yellow", but I suppose that's not so bound up to a specific cultural history.
Well I’m glad that TFA really explains the connection between Jinroku Masaki and the Mitsubishi family crest because otherwise I’d still be confused. (Or maybe it’s a westerner thing expecting the name of the founder to match the crests family in name)
It's not clear why the 3 companies got the right to use the same logo. Perhaps they could each demonstrate that they used that logo before Japanese law required for it to be formally submitted for trademark?
Level 3, the biggest Internet backbone transit provide, was spun off from the Peter Kiewit construction firm, and had as its original asset a coal mine in Wyoming.
It would have been interesting to see what happened if it hadn't spun off, suddenly you'd have a huge Fortune 500 telecom where its side business was running a railroad.
Would that have kept them afloat as an operation? I've spent the last few decades here watching as their red-and-grey engines disappeared in a sea of yellow.
In that case, they used to be the same company, and one was spun off. In the Mitsubishi case, there were at least 2 or 3 separate companies that were never really related
Husqvarna can be either a motorsports marquee or mowers and chainsaws. Each descends from a gun company, hence the barrel-and-sights logo.
Piaggio is both aerospace and motorbikes - each having descended from a common corporate ancestor.
Philips can be two different brands of smartbulbs. They spun off the original as Hue, and then developed another line more recently.
I'm sure there are American examples too, if you look at century+ old conglomerates like GE or Boeing. NBC (formerly of GE) is about to be its own example, when CNBC and MSNBC get spun off.
Remember TV Guide? About 20 years back, Macrovision spun off the print magazine but kept the name, logo, and digital-media assets; these changed hands a few more times and are currently a subsidiary of Fandom. Meanwhile the print magazine is currently published by a separate entity, TV Guide Magazine LLC, which licenses the name and logo from the Fandom digital-media company.
Apparently both products need high quality steel (for piano wires and engines), and that's how the company diversified (I can't remember which one started first).
Toyota was a maker of cotton looming machines before cars, and Nokia was a pulp mill and rubber manufacturer...
They briefly had a living room and kitchen furnishings company, too – YAMAHA Livingtec – but the heritage was clear there: they expanded from wooden piano housings to other wooden furnishings.
I simply love how it’s three tuning forks - I had a Toyota Celica GT-S with the Dual cam motor that spun to 8,200 redline and the sound it made was amazing and I’ve always had a feeling Yamaha’s motor division still values their music heritage when they can. That engine sang…
Probably yes, the Mitsubishi conglomerate is about 150 years old and it's spread across many industries, they where especially influential during the world wars (look up for 'zaibatsu'), so one can suppose that they are very indluential.
I first heard the word Kereitsu in the movie Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. The movie involves large Japanese corporations and this word is used a lot. It's a great movie, well worth watching -- though I have no idea how accurate it is. It depicts large Japanese corporations vying for an American technology company.
I mainly associate that movie with Sean Connery's lecture on the senpai-kohai relationship in which, being Sean Connery, he pronounced "senpai" like "shenpai".
Rising Sun in both novel and film forms were written in a time of strong anti-Japanese sentiment, in which there was considerable fear that Japanese companies would gobble up American assets (real estate, businesses, etc.) till there was no domestic industry left. Japan really was the China of the 1980s. Of course, things didn't really stay that way; the Japanese economy stagnated but the popularity of Japanese media like anime, manga, and video games helped foster more positive relations between Japan and the West (especially the USA).
Take Rising Sun as a "product of its time" and it's really quite enjoyable.
The keiretsu are actually groups of related companies that cooperate, often around a central bank which is the core of the keiretsu. They are usually descendants of zaibatsu, which were the huge dynastic companies that were broken up after WWII, although some "new keiretsu", like Seven & i Holdings which administers, among other things, 7-Eleven's Japanese locations, have emerged.
This leaves me with more questions than answers, how did these three companies come up with the idea of using that logo? Did they just independently arrive at same design (seems unlikely)? And how did the trademark registration process go for the second and third companies that registered it?
Turns out they used to be one conglomerate, but World War II changed that [0]:
> The Mitsubishi Group traces its origins to the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, a unified company that existed from 1870 to 1946. The company, along with other major zaibatsu, was disbanded during the occupation of Japan following World War II by the order of the Allies. Despite the dissolution, the former constituent companies continue to share the Mitsubishi brand and trademark.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi
The pencil company referenced in the article does not appear to have been part of the Mitsubishi zaibatsu however.
I used to think it's cool the same company makes a pencil and an F-16 derivative ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_F-2 ), but alas, the pencilmaker is not the same company.
Mitsubishi also makes the world's most expensive toaster: https://youtu.be/Lq3iwWaoU7w
Not the case here. These 3 corp are unrelated (Excerpt for the name, logo). Did you even read the blog post or the wikipedia article you post?
These pages[0][1] has more details. The families had three different emblems to start. The zaibatsu came up with the now famous three diamond design in in 1873[2], but there were no trademark laws until 1884, and many companies proceeded to use the logo. The pencil company first registered this in 1903. The zaibatsu finally got to it in 1914, but the earlier filing by the pencil company was honoured.
As for the cider company, sounds like they've been selling it like it since 1913[2], but registered it in 1919? My guess is that since it was a regional product with the product type in the name that's already established (like [3]), they allowed it.
[0] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B9%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3... (translated: https://ja-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%E3%82%B9%E3%...) [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/jp/kenjiando/mitsubishi-pencil [2] https://www.mitsubishi.com/ja/series/yataro/11/ [3] https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%B0%E5%9F%9F%E5%9B%A3%...
The Kanji for Mitsubishi is 三菱, which literally means “three rhombus”. It is possible that they were independently invented, but the hypothesis on family crest crossovers still feels more likely
Independent invention seems unlikely to me - there are different colors, different ways to arrange the three rhombi, etc.
The design is much older in east asia, I've seen it on 19th century textiles and pottery for sure but I suspect it goes back a lot more than that.
The shape is somehow associated with the name mitsubishi, possibly through visual or phonetic punning that is common in pictogram-based writing systems and tonal languages. Mitsubishi the name is more widespread than this one family or this group of companies, and the symbol appears to have long associated with the name per se rather than this specific mitsubishi. Mitsu sounds like three, I don't know what the rhombus connection is.
That shade of red has a specific proper name in japanese (think like alice blue in english) and has long been associated with japan by the japanese.
I don't think any of this is a coincidence there's a connection between all this stuff. But I don't know what it is and I don't think the article author does either.
> a specific proper name in japanese (think like alice blue in english)
I hadn't heard of that one [0], the example that comes to mind is "Canary Yellow", but I suppose that's not so bound up to a specific cultural history.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_blue
Sure yeah that sounds right.
The Kanji for Mitsubishi is 三菱, which literally means “three rhombus”.
Incidentally, this Chinese brand:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Motors
...has a logo that's rather reminiscent of Mitsubishi's, and literally means "five rhombus".
It's mentioned in TFA that it comes from the Mitsubishi family crest. So the logo is conceptually much older than any of their registrations.
Well I’m glad that TFA really explains the connection between Jinroku Masaki and the Mitsubishi family crest because otherwise I’d still be confused. (Or maybe it’s a westerner thing expecting the name of the founder to match the crests family in name)
The company history page on the corporate web site of Mitsubishi Pencils provides a reason behind the name: https://www.mpuni.co.jp/en/company/history.html
It's not clear why the 3 companies got the right to use the same logo. Perhaps they could each demonstrate that they used that logo before Japanese law required for it to be formally submitted for trademark?
See my reply up on the original question.
Trademarks are for certain product or service categories not blanket economy wide
Reminds me of Yamaha, pianos and motorcycles sharing name and logo.
Nokia was originally a rubber company, meaning at one point you could find the same logo on cellphones, car tires and rubber boots.
(If you're wondering how you get from rubber to phones, they had rubber-coated cables and wired telephone switches along the way.)
Level 3, the biggest Internet backbone transit provide, was spun off from the Peter Kiewit construction firm, and had as its original asset a coal mine in Wyoming.
The US Telco Sprint was spun off from the Southern Pacific railroad - train lines are convenient places to lay fibre trunks
It would have been interesting to see what happened if it hadn't spun off, suddenly you'd have a huge Fortune 500 telecom where its side business was running a railroad.
Would that have kept them afloat as an operation? I've spent the last few decades here watching as their red-and-grey engines disappeared in a sea of yellow.
Nintendo was playing cards.
In that case, they used to be the same company, and one was spun off. In the Mitsubishi case, there were at least 2 or 3 separate companies that were never really related
Husqvarna can be either a motorsports marquee or mowers and chainsaws. Each descends from a gun company, hence the barrel-and-sights logo.
Piaggio is both aerospace and motorbikes - each having descended from a common corporate ancestor.
Philips can be two different brands of smartbulbs. They spun off the original as Hue, and then developed another line more recently.
I'm sure there are American examples too, if you look at century+ old conglomerates like GE or Boeing. NBC (formerly of GE) is about to be its own example, when CNBC and MSNBC get spun off.
> I'm sure there are American examples too
Hemingway shot himself with a gun he bought at ... Abercrombie & Fitch
I beleive that Yamaha Motor Co was spun out of Yamaha Corp. So they share the same logo because they were once one company.
This is not too unheard of even in the West.
Rolls Royce Motor Cars is owned by BMW but they just bought use of the name.
The old Rolls Royce Motors who used to make the cars was sold to VW (but not the name).
Rolls Royce Holdings Plc., the defence and aerospace firm, actually own the name but don't make cars.
Clear as mud.
Remember TV Guide? About 20 years back, Macrovision spun off the print magazine but kept the name, logo, and digital-media assets; these changed hands a few more times and are currently a subsidiary of Fandom. Meanwhile the print magazine is currently published by a separate entity, TV Guide Magazine LLC, which licenses the name and logo from the Fandom digital-media company.
Apparently both products need high quality steel (for piano wires and engines), and that's how the company diversified (I can't remember which one started first).
Toyota was a maker of cotton looming machines before cars, and Nokia was a pulp mill and rubber manufacturer...
They briefly had a living room and kitchen furnishings company, too – YAMAHA Livingtec – but the heritage was clear there: they expanded from wooden piano housings to other wooden furnishings.
What are the American equivalents? Microsoft and IBM to some extent? GE?
I simply love how it’s three tuning forks - I had a Toyota Celica GT-S with the Dual cam motor that spun to 8,200 redline and the sound it made was amazing and I’ve always had a feeling Yamaha’s motor division still values their music heritage when they can. That engine sang…
With the motorcycles having tuning forks in the logo, despite having nothing to do with motor vehicles.
Motorcycle forks look rather similar, though.
Does Mitsubishi have the sort of political influence and lobbying that you might expect from a big company in Western countries?
MUFG, a part of Mitsubishi, is Japan's largest bank with around $1.5 trillion in assets. So, yes, absolutely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUFG
Probably yes, the Mitsubishi conglomerate is about 150 years old and it's spread across many industries, they where especially influential during the world wars (look up for 'zaibatsu'), so one can suppose that they are very indluential.
It’s confusing to just say that Nikon or Kirin are Mitsubishi companies. It has to do with how keiretsu-style conglomerates operated.
https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/nikon/about-nikon/nikon...
I first heard the word Kereitsu in the movie Rising Sun with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. The movie involves large Japanese corporations and this word is used a lot. It's a great movie, well worth watching -- though I have no idea how accurate it is. It depicts large Japanese corporations vying for an American technology company.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107969/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8...
I mainly associate that movie with Sean Connery's lecture on the senpai-kohai relationship in which, being Sean Connery, he pronounced "senpai" like "shenpai".
Rising Sun in both novel and film forms were written in a time of strong anti-Japanese sentiment, in which there was considerable fear that Japanese companies would gobble up American assets (real estate, businesses, etc.) till there was no domestic industry left. Japan really was the China of the 1980s. Of course, things didn't really stay that way; the Japanese economy stagnated but the popularity of Japanese media like anime, manga, and video games helped foster more positive relations between Japan and the West (especially the USA).
Take Rising Sun as a "product of its time" and it's really quite enjoyable.
The keiretsu are actually groups of related companies that cooperate, often around a central bank which is the core of the keiretsu. They are usually descendants of zaibatsu, which were the huge dynastic companies that were broken up after WWII, although some "new keiretsu", like Seven & i Holdings which administers, among other things, 7-Eleven's Japanese locations, have emerged.
> Seven & i Holdings
Which is about to be bought out by Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard (Circle K)!
Love that movie!