kawasaki z1000

Kawasaki is a multi-national corporation with more than fifty holdings (manufacturing plants, distributions centers, and marketing and sales headquarters) in most major cities around the world. Business interests include environmental control and energy plant engineering, machinery and robotics, ship building and marine engineering, power plant engineering and steel structures, rolling stock, aerospace, and of course, ATVs, motorcycles, Side x Side vehicles and personal watercraft. Like all companies, Kawasaki began with a dream and grew into the great corporation it is today.

In 1878 Shozo Kawasaki, the founder, opened a shipyard to build ocean-going steel ships. In 1886, the fledgling operation was expanded to become Kawasaki Dockyard.

Ten years later in 1896, Kawasaki Dockyard was incorporated and Kojiro Matsukata was appointed first president of the company. Fabrication of locomotives, freight cars, passenger carriages and bridge girders began in 1906 at the newly opened Hyogo Works, and in the following year, production of marine steam turbines began at the dockyard.

During 1918, the Aircraft Department was established at the Hyogo Works only 15 years after the Wright brothers' virgin flight. The department began manufacturing aircraft at a time when airplanes, which could only remain airborne for a few hours, were still made from cloth and wood. Soon after, a plant to manufacture airplanes was built, and Japan's first aircraft made from metal was completed at this plant.