OVERVIEW
MASUNAGA’s 120 years are less a story of an old brand than a story of turning skill into a regional industry
Calling MASUNAGA since 1905 simply a 120-year-old Japanese eyewear brand misses the most important part of its history. Its starting point was unusual. When Gozaemon Masunaga began eyewear production in Fukui in 1905, the aim was not to create a luxury label bearing his name. It was to create a sustainable local industry in a snowy region with limited farmland and few reliable sources of income.
What followed was not a single-master success story. Craftsmen were brought from Osaka and later Tokyo, while a guild-like workshop system called the chōba system organized multiple master-and-apprentice groups that learned, competed, and improved together. Masunaga’s corporate history presents this as a starting point for Fukui’s eyewear industry.
Today, MASUNAGA looks almost like the reverse image of that early model. The company describes an integrated system covering more than 400 precise processes from concept to completion, while its directly operated boutiques keep the manufacturer in contact with customers. In 1905 the challenge was to spread skill through a region; today the challenge is to reconnect accumulated skills inside one quality system.
The useful way to read MASUNAGA, therefore, is not through the labels ‘Made in Japan,’ ‘handmade,’ or simply ‘heritage.’ The deeper subject is how technical judgment moved from individual hands into a structure that could be learned, competed over, inherited, and eventually reintegrated across 120 years.
01 · ORIGIN
The starting problem was not eyewear itself, but how to build an industry that could keep people working through Fukui’s winters
According to Masunaga Optical’s corporate history, the Asōzu area of Fukui at the end of the nineteenth century suffered from heavy snow, limited farmland, and a weak local economic base. Gozaemon Masunaga was searching for an industry that could improve village life when his younger brother Kohachi proposed eyeglass-frame production. It could begin as winter work, become a full-time skill, and benefit from the expected rise in reading and eyewear demand as education spread.
After deciding to proceed in late 1904, Gozaemon took a skilled village carpenter, Suekichi Masunaga, to Osaka to learn frame making from eyewear craftsman Yohachi Yoneda. He then persuaded Yoneda, his wife, and an apprentice to move to Fukui. On June 1, 1905, local craftsmen gathered as Masunaga’s first generation, marking the formal beginning of eyewear production in Fukui.
The sequence matters. Demand was considered first; skilled knowledge was then imported from outside the region; finally, a structure was created so local people could repeatedly learn the craft. The founding itself was a technology-transfer project.
Masunaga later brought Matsutaro Toyoshima, a master craftsman trained in Tokyo, to Fukui. Tokyo was already experimenting with division of labor, plating, iron materials, and celluloid frame prototypes. MASUNAGA’s early growth was therefore not based on protecting a closed local tradition. It began by actively importing advanced know-how and adapting it locally.
02 · CHOBA SYSTEM
MASUNAGA’s first advantage was not one master artisan, but a system designed to keep producing masters
Early Fukui eyewear did not immediately earn market trust. Frames were sometimes rejected and had to be remade. Even after production capacity increased, sales did not rise as expected, and funding became dangerously tight. The problem was not simply how to produce more; quality had to rise first.
The response was the chōba system. First-generation craftsmen became responsible masters, each leading a group of apprentices. Gozaemon placed work with the different masters and took responsibility for the finished products. The teams watched one another, competed over skill, and searched for better frames and new methods.
This matters more than the romantic language of ‘handcraft.’ Skill was not locked inside one celebrated individual. It was reproduced and improved across multiple master-apprentice groups. MASUNAGA’s current recruitment materials explicitly connect this system to the later emergence of many eyewear companies in the region.
Scaling a craft business creates a structural problem: more volume can dilute skill, but dependence on one artisan makes expansion impossible. Early MASUNAGA answered with team-based competition, apprenticeship, and distributed responsibility.
03 · FUKUI CLUSTER
By 1911, thirteen eyewear factories had appeared around Fukui — company production was becoming a regional production network
Masunaga’s corporate history records that by 1911 thirteen eyewear factories had been established around Fukui. That same year, gold-and-copper frames exhibited under Gozaemon Masunaga’s name received a first-class gold award at a national products exhibition. Six years after the 1905 start, Fukui-made eyewear was beginning to gain recognition outside the region.
Fukui’s position today can also be seen in institutional data. The Fukui Prefecture government describes eyeglass frames as a representative local industry and states that the prefecture accounts for roughly 90 percent of national production. The Fukui Optical Association likewise describes Fukui as producing more than 90 percent of Japan’s eyewear. Exact percentages vary by dataset and year, but the concentration of production is unmistakable.
It would be too simple to say that MASUNAGA single-handedly created the entire Fukui eyewear industry. The cluster was built over time by many companies, craftspeople, and specialized processes. What the official histories do show clearly is that Masunaga’s 1905 transfer of know-how and its chōba system sit at one of the formative starting points.
This overlap between company history and regional industrial history is what makes MASUNAGA unusual. ‘Fukui’ is not merely an origin label attached to the product; the company’s early organizational model is part of the story of how the production region itself formed.
04 · INTEGRATION
Inside a region built on specialization, modern MASUNAGA reconnects more than 400 processes under one organization
Modern MASUNAGA controls quality differently from the early chōba system. Its official About page says the company designs, engineers, and manufactures frames through more than 400 precise steps from concept to completion. Corporate information also places planning, design, manufacturing, and direct retail inside the same business structure.
This does not mean that a single artisan performs every task. Contemporary eyewear production links fundamentally different operations: tooling, cutting, pressing, joining, polishing, surface treatment, assembly, and inspection. The value of integration is not eliminating specialization; it is controlling the interfaces so that design intent is not lost as the frame moves from one process to the next.
The ‘400-plus processes’ figure is therefore more useful as a statement about management scope than as a marketing number. Front curvature, bridge precision, temple elasticity, material combinations, and surface finish all need to converge in one frame. Understanding whether an error can be corrected downstream—or will compound through later processes—requires knowledge of the whole chain.
Masunaga also says that direct boutiques keep the company close to its customers. When manufacturing and retail remain connected, the product does not end at the drawing or factory inspection. Real wearing experience can travel back into manufacturing decisions. If the 1905 organization was built to distribute skill, the current one is built to reconnect distributed expertise into a single quality judgment.
05 · HISTORICAL OBJECTS
The Royal of 1933 and Custom 72 of 1970 are not merely old models; they remain reference points for current product lineages
In 1933, during Emperor Shōwa’s visit to Fukui, Masunaga presented three frames to the Emperor. The company’s 120th-anniversary archive describes The Royal as an origin point of the later GMS series. The historical object is therefore preserved not only as a prestige artifact, but as a design reference for a continuing line.
In 1970, Custom 72 was placed in the time capsule at Expo ’70 as a cultural legacy intended for 5,000 years into the future. MASUNAGA describes it as the original design that later gave rise to the enduring Koki series.
The significance of these two objects is not simply that one was presented to an emperor and another entered a time capsule. MASUNAGA explicitly links them to living product genealogies: The Royal to GMS, Custom 72 to Koki.
An archive used this way becomes more than brand storytelling. It operates like a design database. Rather than reproducing the past unchanged, a manufacturer can revisit proportions, construction, and visual logic that survived time and reinterpret them in new products.
06 · MATERIAL & ENGINEERING
The point of the 2005 GMS-144M was not merely the luxury of 18K gold, but the engineering required to join dissimilar metals into one working frame
For its centennial in 2005, MASUNAGA introduced the GMS-144M. The company’s official 120th-anniversary archive describes it as the world’s first frame to directly join solid 18K gold and titanium. That priority claim should be read as MASUNAGA’s own official statement rather than as an independently verified industry record, but it clearly shows how the company chose to express its 100th year.
18K gold is usually read first as a language of luxury. The more interesting engineering question is how two metals with different properties can be directly joined and made to function as part of a real eyeglass structure rather than as decoration.
The same direction continues in newer work. MASUNAGA MOC combines Sterling Silver 925 decoration, thick Japanese acetate, titanium, cast medallions, and other processes. Edition120 MOC models specify a 5-micron 18K gold plating treatment described as substantially thicker than the regular finish.
MASUNAGA’s craftsmanship is therefore difficult to reduce to the amount of handwork involved. It sits at the boundary of craft and engineering: where to place a material, how precisely unlike parts are joined, and whether those interfaces continue to hold shape and function in actual wear.
07 · DESIGN EXPANSION
The Kenzo Takada collaboration placed a fashion language on top of an existing manufacturing base
The relationship between MASUNAGA and Kenzo Takada began in 2011 at an eyewear shop in Paris. According to MASUNAGA, Takada discovered and began wearing MASUNAGA since 1905 frames there. Their relationship developed into a project, and MASUNAGA designed by Kenzo Takada launched in Paris in 2014.
The collaboration was not presented as a simple celebrity signature. MASUNAGA describes it through the Japanese aesthetic of ma, engraving on decorative components, strong color contrasts, and references to traditional craft and architecture. The 2014 Mokko model appears in the 120th archive as a meeting point of traditional craft, architecture, and multiple aesthetic sources.
After Takada died in 2020, the collaboration continued with K3, the lifestyle brand he founded, under the name MASUNAGA | K3. Instead of ending when one individual disappeared, the project’s design language was transferred into another team and brand structure.
Meanwhile, the main MASUNAGA since 1905 line now uses ‘Timeless Elegance’ as its concept and cites architecture and culture around the world as design sources. The brand presents high manufacturing precision, but the finished forms usually resolve that technology into restraint rather than turning the frame into a loud display of engineering.
08 · 120 YEARS
Edition120 did not reconstruct the past; it compressed recurring manufacturing languages into five contemporary models
MASUNAGA introduced MOC—MASTERS OF CRAFT—in 2024, then marked its 120th anniversary in 2025 with Edition120. According to the official anniversary site, Edition120 consists of five models: LEX, RADIO CITY, and MOC 004, 005, and 006.
The collection does not try to place 120 years of history into one commemorative frame. LEX foregrounds the seamless relationship of 18K gold and titanium, while the MOC models emphasize other capabilities such as thick acetate, silver decoration, gold plating, and medallion work. Instead of one ‘120th-anniversary design,’ the collection distributes different accumulated manufacturing languages across several frames.
The official phrase is ‘Our Story Continues.’ More important than the anniversary number is the continuity the company claims between the transfer of skill in 1905, the chōba system, the development of a regional industry, integrated production, and later material and design experiments.
It is easy for an old company to lean on history. The harder task is to show what that history still enables in the structure and production of current products. Edition120 is better understood as MASUNAGA presenting accumulated manufacturing options—not age itself—as the usable asset of its history.
GLANOS VIEW
MASUNAGA’s real asset is not the abstract idea of ‘craftsmanship,’ but an organization that allowed technical judgment to survive beyond one generation
‘Craftsmanship’ is not wrong as a description of MASUNAGA, but it is incomplete. One artisan’s skill can be extraordinary and still disappear when that person leaves. Explaining 120 years requires looking at how skill moved beyond individuals.
In 1905, outside craftsmen were brought into Fukui to transfer know-how. Under the chōba system, multiple masters and apprentice groups competed and reproduced that knowledge. The system helped create new manufacturing actors in the region. Today, more than 400 processes are reconnected inside one organization, while direct retail sends information from finished products back toward the company.
At first glance, early ‘skill diffusion’ and today’s ‘integrated manufacturing’ look like opposites. Their purpose is similar: prevent the criteria for making good eyewear from breaking at one person or one process. The old system preserved knowledge by multiplying people and teams; the modern system preserves it by connecting processes and information.
From this perspective, MASUNAGA’s moat is not simply a Made in Japan label or one proprietary material. It is the ability to know why each process exists and to leave that manufacturing judgment inside the organization so that the next generation can use it again.
A long history only proves that a company has survived. History becomes competitive advantage when past technical choices can still make present products more precise. MASUNAGA is compelling because that connection can be seen simultaneously at the product, organizational, and regional-industry levels.
BRAND PROFILE
Brand Profile
- Company / Brand
- Masunaga Optical Mfg. Co., Ltd. / MASUNAGA since 1905
- Founded
- June 1, 1905 · Fukui, Japan
- Founder
- Gozaemon Masunaga / 増永五左衛門
- Current brand concept
- Timeless Elegance
- Manufacturing
- Integrated design, engineering and manufacturing · 400+ processes described by the company
- Historical markers
- The Royal · 1933 / Custom 72 · 1970 / GMS-144M · 2005
- Design collaboration
- MASUNAGA designed by Kenzo Takada · launched 2014 → MASUNAGA | K3
- 120th anniversary
- Edition120 · 2025
SOURCES
Sources & References
The founding story, chōba workshop system, formation of the Fukui production region, current integrated manufacturing, historical models, 18K/titanium joining, Kenzo Takada collaboration, and 120th-anniversary collection were checked primarily against first-party Masunaga corporate and brand materials. Fukui’s current production concentration was cross-checked against official Fukui Prefecture and Fukui Optical Association sources.
Priority claims such as ‘world’s first’ are presented as statements made by MASUNAGA in its official 120th-anniversary archive, not as independently verified industry records.
- Masunaga Optical · STORY1905 founding background, craftsmen from Osaka and Tokyo, the chōba system, and early formation of Fukui’s eyewear industry
- Masunaga Optical · ABOUTCurrent integrated system, more than 400 processes from concept to completion, and direct connection with customers
- Masunaga Optical · COMPANY PROFILECompany data, June 1, 1905 establishment, historical milestones including the 1933 presentation
- MASUNAGA 120th · ARCHIVESThe Royal, Custom 72, GMS-144M, Mokko, and other historical models in the 120-year product lineage
- MASUNAGA 120th · Edition120The five Edition120 models and the official 120th-anniversary collection statement
- MASUNAGA | K32011 meeting with Kenzo Takada, 2014 collaboration launch, and continuation with K3 after 2020
- MASUNAGA MOC · CRAFTSMANSHIPSterling Silver 925, Japanese acetate, 5-micron 18K plating, and current MOC manufacturing details
- MASUNAGA since 1905Current ‘Timeless Elegance’ concept, architecture and culture as design sources, and material techniques
- Fukui Prefecture · IndustryOfficial prefectural description of eyeglass frames as roughly 90% of Japanese production
- Fukui Optical AssociationAssociation description of Fukui accounting for more than 90% of domestic eyewear production