In 1946, Noboru Hayama, the founder of RISO, hanged up a small signboard reading “Riso-sha” on the front door of his home in Setagaya, Tokyo, to start a small mimeograph printing company, which was the first step to establishing RISO KAGAKU CORPORATION.
Hayama says, “I started this business when anyone was busy to secure foods in the chaotic situation just after the World War II. I believed there would be no future in the nation if the people had no ideal and that the people should keep ideals in the precise time they could not trust future at all. Therefore, I decided to stick to my own ideals, whatever I would do, and started business, selecting a word meaning “ideal”, Riso, as company name.”
In 1954, RISO succeeded in developing emulsion ink, named “RISO INK”, for the first time in Japan.
Back at that time, no emulsion ink for duplicators was available except by import. Hayama realized it was necessary to be able to obtain emulsion ink at any time and started to develop ink by assigning the job to a new-organized research section in 1952. After two years of trial and error, the first-in-Japan emulsion ink, “RISO INK”, was developed. Though this ink was developed only for own use, it received considerable publicity, thus leading RISO to build a new plant and begin the production and sales of the said ink. As a result, RISO acquired the capacity of producing ink for sales as well as for own use and took the first step toward a manufacturing company of printing equipment, growing out of a street-corner print shop.