Skip to main content
obituary

Kazuo Kashio, a marketing virtuoso whose family company, Casio Computer, popularized the pocket calculator, the shock-resistant wristwatch and the preview screen on digital cameras, died on June 18 at a hospital in Tokyo. He was 89.

The cause was pneumonia, the company said.

Open this photo in gallery:

Kazuo Kashio (File Photo).Casio Computer Co. via AP

Mr. Kashio, who headed the family company for nearly three decades, was credited as the salesman who turned Casio’s innovative mini-calculator into a universal device and revamped the image of the wristwatch from a dainty, elegant timepiece when it introduced the rugged, knobby, retro G-Shock. Last August, Casio turned out its 100 millionth G-Shock since the watch was introduced in 1983.

Mr. Kashio and his three brothers transformed Casio from a homegrown backyard machine shop into a global company, with US$3-billion in annual sales of digital watches and cameras, calculators, electronic keyboards and other musical instruments, and high-speed printers.

Casio Computer was born as Kashio Manufacturing in 1946, in the rubble of post-Second World War Japan when Kazuo Kashio’s older brother Tadao conjured a finger-ring cigarette holder that would allow the wearer to smoke down to the filterless butt in tobacco-starved Japan.

Anointing their father as the company’s first president, Tadao, Kazuo and their two other brothers renamed the company Casio in 1957 – they westernized their surname to broaden the company’s appeal in postwar world markets – and transformed it, investing the considerable profit from the popular cigarette ring in research and the development of other devices.

Kazuo Kashio, the company’s gregarious retailing specialist, was president from 1988 until 2015, when he became chairman and chief executive, posts he held at his death. He was succeeded as president by his oldest son, Kazuhiro.

Kazuo Kashio was born on Jan. 9, 1929, in Kureta-mura (now Nankoku), in southern Japan, to Shigeru and Kiyono Kashio.

His father was a rice farmer who moved to Tokyo with his family and became a construction worker, helping rebuild the city after a devastating earthquake in 1923. To save money, he walked to and from work, for a total of five hours.

Mr. Kashio graduated in 1949 from an English course affiliated with Nihon University in Tokyo. In 1950, he joined his brothers Tadao and Toshio at the fledgling consumer goods factory that was churning out the cigarette rings and a corn biscuit baker. Tadao had worked in a munitions plant and made airplane components during the war.

In the early 1950s, their fourth brother, Yukio, an engineer, joined the firm. By 1957, they had perfected an innovative electronic calculator that could not only add and subtract, but also multiply. It weighed 308 pounds and sold for the equivalent of US$11,000 in today’s dollars.

By 1965, Casio was producing desktop calculators. In 1972, the company introduced the Casio Mini, billed as the world’s first personal calculator. It became ubiquitous after a prodigious marketing campaign.

While European craftsmen scoffed at electronic watches, Casio perfected quartz and digital models sold under the motto “Time is a continuous process of addition.”

In 1974, the company unveiled the Casiotron, a digital wristwatch that displayed a calendar in addition to the time.

The G-Shock was heavily promoted through, among other marketing tools, product placement in films such as Men in Black and Mission: Impossible.

The Casiotone-201, an electronic musical keyboard, was introduced in 1980, followed by the QV-10 digital camera in 1995 and pocket televisions, word processors, car navigation systems, blood pressure sensors and more.

Mr. Kashio leaves his wife, Soko, as well as two daughters, a son and his brother Yukio.

New York Times News Service

Interact with The Globe