Ichisuke Fujioka

Ichisuke Fujioka was a Japanese electrical engineer, born in February 1856 in the Choshu domain, who became one of the pioneers of electrical engineering in Japan. He studied at the Tokyo Engineering College, graduating in 1881, and served as a professor there from 1884 to 1886 before leaving academia for industry. In 1890 he co-founded Hakunetsusha with Shoichi Miyoshi, a company that manufactured Japan's early light bulbs using bamboo filaments and that was renamed Tokyo Denki in 1905, eventually becoming part of the modern Toshiba Corporation. Fujioka also served as chief electrician of the Tokyo Electric Light Company and as a founder and later chief engineer of the Tokyo Street Railway Company.