In High-Tech Japan, Craftsmen Still Have an Edge Over Machines

Whenever he wants to make his legendary Olympic equipment, master craftsman Masahisa Tsujitani simply heads downstairs to a workshop about the size of a two-car garage.

The 67-year-old hunches over his lathe and, with the skilled eye of a jeweler, the steady hand of a surgeon and the seasoning of an athlete, grinds the cast-iron mass into a sphere with grooves almost as fine as a fingerprint.

The gold-medal result: shots that are being hurled great lengths by sturdy young men and women at the Sydney Olympics.

Japan’s vaunted high-tech assembly lines turn out Toyotas, Sonys and Nintendos by the millions, but the success of Tsujitani’s shotput gear is testament that some of the country’s highly prized but lesser-known products are still made one at a time.

In thousands of tiny shops throughout Japan, found in places you’d least expect, these master craftsmen still can be found hard at work, opting to use their hands rather than the advanced robotic machines for which Japan is known.

Tokyo’s Ota ward is still full of such mom-and-pop factories. Yet they are fast becoming a dying breed amid declining sales, recruiting difficulties, aging facilities and the lure of cheaper operating costs elsewhere in Asia. The number of factories in Ota ward alone plunged from 9,000 a decade ago to just 6,000 this year.

Special Designation of Super Technician

Most of Japan’s businesses are still small, with more than 4 million of them employing fewer than 20 people, says the Ministry of Trade and Industry. One-third of those are manufacturers.

Skilled craftsmen have become so endangered in Japan that the government has created a special designation of “Supaa Ginosha”--super technician--honoring about 1,124 skilled workers for whom machines are no substitute for skill. These craftsmen, primarily in the auto and electronics industries, do welding, metal pattern-making, casting and other tasks. Their senses are so finely tuned that they can often judge precision within a thousandth of a millimeter, using sight, sound, touch, vibration and even the emission of sparks.

The government hopes that these workers, such as Ricoh’s Teruo Noda, will teach their crafts to younger Japanese. Noda, 59, makes the metal molds into which plastic is poured to produce delicate camera parts. If the fit is off by more than a thousandth of a millimeter, the camera will not operate properly.

Another is Takayuki Kosuga, a 31-year veteran of Toshiba Corp. who lathes parts for medical equipment and satellites. He finishes the work by using a knife to scrape the parts within a thousandth of a millimeter--a factor of 10 more precise than the closest machine.

But most of those awards go solely to those who work for Japan’s large corporations, not the entrepreneurs who are even more at risk of becoming dinosaurs.

Young Tend to Shun Work Seen as Three Ks

In fact, most of the highly skilled workers in Japan are older than 50, and organizations such as the Japan Vocational Ability Assn. worry that in 10 years those skills will disappear. Young people tend to shun the work often viewed in Japan as the three Ks, for kibishi, kitanai and kawai--difficult, dirty and dangerous.

Some of the mom-and-pop shops might, superficially at least, be considered an efficiency expert’s nightmare. Even the proprietors realize that such labor-intensive work often doesn’t make sense in dollar terms.

“It would be cheaper to do it by computer, considering the salaries I have to pay, but this highly skilled work can’t be replaced by computer,” said Katsuaki Hasegawa, whose five-man Tokyo factory exports only about 10 sets of Uesaka barbells a year for about $6,500 each. The shop also makes diving boards.

Hasegawa’s barbells, like Tsujitani’s shots, are being showcased at the Olympic Games, as are the Butterfly brand table-tennis rackets that are custom-made by Satoru Chihara, 63, for top players in more than 80 countries. Chihara works in a partly automated factory with about 130 others, but he makes all the special orders by hand.

Tsujitani’s lovingly made product, which sells under the Nishi brand name, was chosen by all the shotput medalists in the Atlanta Games four years ago and by all eight prize winners at the World Championships last year. (Each athlete chooses from an assortment of five brands from nearly as many countries.)

Ukrainian shot-putter and 1996 bronze medalist Aleksandr Bagach agrees, giving Tsujitani’s work the highest marks.

“The Japanese shot has a soft touch and a nice feeling, and the gravity position is good,” he said in a television interview. “If it’s not centered right, it can make one to two meters’ [one to two yards’] difference.” Unfortunately, Bagach won’t get his turn at the shotput--he was suspended from competition last week for testing positive for steroids.

Most low-end shots are produced simply by pouring cast iron into a mold. Even the higher-end ones sold by fellow Olympic shotput maker Gill Sports Equipment Inc. in Urbana-Champaign, Ill., are mounted on a jig and shaved by a robotics-controlled lathe, a Gill spokesman said. (Gill contracts another firm to make its shots.)

Craftsman Tsujitani, however, claims that 70% of shots churned out by machine are defective because the balance is off.

An Expert Can Judge by Sound of the Lathe

And balance is key. The iron-and-lead balls, which weigh about 16 pounds for the men’s versions and 8 pounds, 11 ounces for the women’s, should have a higher density in the lower half and a lower density in the upper half. Tsujitani can tell from the sound his lathe makes as he shapes the shot exactly where the density is: A higher pitched sound means that it’s a lower-density area and vice versa.

The fact that he’s always been athletic contributed to Tsujitani’s success. He started making shots 35 years ago, when, as an amateur sprinter racing in the 100-meter event, he played around often with the equipment in another track and field event--the shot--and thought that he could produce a better grip. (He still runs five marathons a year, clocking in at about five hours.)

The process of making the cast-iron ball into an Olympic-ready shot can seem like a marathon because so many steps are involved. It takes Tsujitani about five days from start to finish, although he can produce about 100 during that time.

Using his sturdy 15-year-old lathe in the small factory whose wood-paneled walls are hung with drill bits, machine belts and vises, he cuts grooves that seek to duplicate the grip of the fingers that will be holding the shot, making them horizontal like those on the first and second joint of the finger. He varies the grips from eight lines to 12 lines for each centimeter, so each athlete can choose his or her favorite.

“Some like it rough, some like it fine,” he said.

Because he sells the shots for $50 wholesale--they retail for about $150--and one-third of that price is raw materials, he’s hardly getting wealthy. He makes only about 2,500 to 3,000 a year, including 30 for the Sydney Olympics for both men and women.

“We are not a profitable industry,” he said. “We are not rich.”

But the family business, which involves his wife and most of their six children, does earn about $1 million a year in revenues with its other athletic products. The business supplies most of the hurdles used in Japan’s competitive events. And it is gearing up for sales of starting blocks, launching an innovation that fits the entire heel into the block, rather than just the front of the foot. He’s hoping that they too will eventually be used in the Olympics.

For a while, passing the torch himself seemed a problem. Tsujitani is hoping to retire from shot-making in three years, but fortunately his third son seems to have his father’s knack for the lathe and is steadily picking up some of his father’s instincts.

Not that Tsujitani is planning to stop working. “I’ll retire but take up a different job,” Tsujitani said.

In fact, he’s been at the Olympics for the last week, but it wasn’t the shotput event he went to see. That’s old hat. His shots have been winning for years and are now used by 80% of the shot-putters.

He was checking out the triathlon for ideas of new gear that he could make, with visions of better bike racks dancing before his eyes.