35｜Glass History: Japanese Glass Makers & Handmade Glass Factories (Part 5)

Hello everyone 🎵

When glasses began to be produced through automation by machines starting in the Showa 30s (1955-1964), the explosive production volume was precisely supported by Japan's high-growth period, where the government's income doubling plan and the three sacred treasures (black and white televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines) spread to households, salaries increased, and people truly felt the richness of life.

There is another factor that enabled glass production to far exceed Japan's population: mass media advertising, prizes, and promotional items, which emerged with the era of mass production and mass consumption. Manufacturers would print their logos or brand logos on glasses and widely distribute them for free to consumers, or give away vast quantities of glasses to restaurants for free as promotional items for beer and sake.

You used to receive glasses with characters or logos, didn't you? Even now, if you go to an inexpensive izakaya, you'll see glasses with beer manufacturer logos. From a manufacturer's perspective, being able to distribute a large quantity of the same item cheaply was a benefit, and companies eagerly used glasses as prizes and promotional items.

This, in turn, led to a distortion in Japan's glass industry!!

I apologize for deviating a bit from the topic of Sasaki Glass, but please bear with me as it's just the musings of a glass shop owner, and it links to the historical background and industry trends.

More than half of the glass production from the 1960s to 70s to the early 2000s (my subjective sense of the era) is said to have been these free glasses. As a result, the custom of getting glasses, especially cups, for free became ingrained, and people only bought special glasses when they paid for them. Special glasses were crystal glasses, thin glasses that couldn't be made by machines, unusually shaped glasses, glasses with special printing or complex processing, and at the time, colored glasses. It was an era when selling what were commonly called ordinary cups was difficult. Because it was such a challenging time, my predecessors worked hard, incorporating Edo Kiriko into glasses, multi-color printing that couldn't be done by machines, devising designs, making amber-colored glasses, and selling sets with ceramic sake bottles and sukiyaki pots. Furthermore, factories and manufacturers emerged that produced glasses that were not cups (which I will discuss later), such as plates, small bowls, and vases, opening up new fields in the Japanese glass market and disseminating them to the world.

Now, back to Sasaki Glass (lol).

After building a factory in Yachiyo, Chiba, the automated manufacturing equipment was gradually transferred from the Tokyo factory in Sumida, specializing the Tokyo factory in the production of crystal glass.

This crystal glass manufacturing led to the second chapter of Sasaki Glass's great leap forward.