A snapshot of war-torn Japan shows an obscure physician turning a few factories into Canon, one of the world's top camera makers.

His name was Takeshi Mitarai — and he did more than refocus Canon (CAJ) as a world-class exporter of optical goods.

In his 32 years as Canon's president, this doctor-turned-exec helped lay the keel for the family-style management that typified many Japanese firms after World War II. He also pioneered marketing ideas that made Japanese products global brands.

Canon today employs 118,000 worldwide and last year posted more than $35 billion in sales. It churns out cameras, camcorders, printers and medical equipment.

Mitarai (1901-84) ran the obstetrics ward of a hospital in Tokyo in the 1930s. He was fascinated by photography and camera making. He also had a knack for forging fast friendships and soon became the confidant of Saburo Uchida, a principal of a camera maker called Precision Optical Industry in Tokyo.

The firm was struggling to turn out copies of superior German-made Leica and Contax 35 mm cameras. Precision's production system was so backward, it turned out less than 10 cameras a month at prices that few Japanese could afford.

Mitarai was multitalented. He had a humane streak that stemmed from his background as a doctor. And he had a head for figures. He was soon providing capital and acting as the camera firm's auditor while delivering babies at his day job.

Mitarai became so indispensable at Precision, he was named its president in 1942 and stopped practicing medicine.

Made In Japan

Precision's cameras were knock-offs of better foreign brands. But Mitarai grasped that Japan's penchant for detail and craftsmanship gave the country an advantage in making high-quality products, much like the Swiss talent for watchmaking.

"The capability was always there in Japan," Mitarai said in a Time magazine interview in June 1961. "But it was channeled into things like Zero fighters and dreadnoughts."

The firm that would be known as Canon still faced huge hurdles.

The first concerned low employee morale. World War II was in full swing. Food and materials were scarce and workers were unnerved by the bombs from U.S. raids on Tokyo. He knew that unhappy employees made terrible products.

So Mitarai turned to what he used with good effect with hospital staffers: modern managerial techniques.

In 1943, he introduced a monthly salary system for employees, a revolutionary idea for Japan.

To safeguard worker health, he gave his employees free X-ray examinations for the tuberculosis that was running rampant, using a special camera he had developed.

After Japan surrendered in 1945, the U.S. flooded the country with progressive ideas about how to run companies. Mitarai was a big backer of the reforms. He tapped the help of an American engineer named William Gorham.

Gorham gave tips on how Mitarai could up camera production. He helped him procure advanced machinery and shared a U.S. concept called scheduled daily production.

With that schedule, Mitarai's firm boosted its daily camera output.

Gorham also passed on U.S. methods of quality control. He got the Japanese to make their product inspection unit independent of the plant manager and put it directly under Mitarai. Product quality jumped since the plant manager couldn't interfere with inspections.

Mitarai cooperated with U.S. officials in setting up New Deal-style worker welfare programs. He started company-subsidized health programs for employees that were models for other Japanese firms.

Mitarai also gave pep talks to impress his workers with the need to churn out finely ground lenses and intricate metal parts.

He rallied the company around the slogan "Catch up to and surpass Leica," recognizing that the German firm was the gold standard among camera makers.

Mitarai's workers were soon designing and making parts for cameras that weren't far behind Leica and Contax in quality.

The quality improvements that Mitarai oversaw paid off when the industry shifted from making simple viewfinder cameras to more complex single lens reflex models that focused directly through the lens.

In another bold stroke, Mitarai got the U.S. military to stock Canons at its post exchanges in Japan. This impressed GIs with the quality and affordability of its cameras, and their fame soon spread to America.

Mitarai's biggest feat after the war was changing the company name. The move landed him a place in the history of branding and marketing.

This happened in 1947 when Precision's name officially became Canon Camera. In the 1930s, Precision made a 35 mm camera called the Kwanon — named after the Buddhist goddess of mercy. The name gelled with Japanese consumers, who knew of Buddhist deities.

Mitarai figured that knowledge was limited. So he came up with Canon. It sounded like Kwanon and played off the English word for standard — suggesting excellence.

Mitarai wanted a brand name that could play well worldwide. Plus, the name brought to mind how the firm's lenses looked like cannon barrels. Thus was born Canon Camera.

"It takes a large degree of imagination and vision to see how a word (like Canon) that has certain existing meanings can be transformed to become the symbol and distillation of your company and all your products," said Anthony Shore, the San Francisco-based global director of naming and writing for branding consultant Landor.

The name stuck with American consumers in the 1950s when Canon began exporting cameras to the U.S. Those shoppers soon were buying thousands of Canons.

By the 1960s, cameras made by Canon and rival Nikon had attained world-class status.

Mitarai kept innovating. In 1966, he instituted the first five-day workweek at a major Japanese company.

He also was one of the first to realize that electronics were making mechanical cameras obsolete.

"Mitarai made sure electronics was going to be the name of the game," said Herbert Keppler, a vice president and senior counselor for Popular Photography & Imaging magazine. "He hired a bunch of electronics engineers and retired the mechanical ones."

The Big Picture

Keppler, a dean of American photography, credits Mitarai with setting the stage for Canon's diversification. Taking his cue from U.S. trailblazers like IBM (IBM) and Xerox, (XRX) Mitarai pushed Canon into producing typewriters and copiers and other optical devices for businesses.

The moves underscored Mitarai's vision. Today, Canon makes an array of optical products, including advanced imaging technology.

Landor's Shore notes that Canon's brand name still resonates. "The Canon brand name can be ascribed to cameras, telescopes, business machines, anything. It's a name that will never limit a company."

Mitarai died in Tokyo in 1984.

BY DOUG TSURUOKA.