The actual birthplace of Bronica was an old Japanese-style building in Kami-Itabashi in Itabashi ward in northern Tokyo, a district known for its numerous small manufacturing operations. Bronica Shinkoudou Manufacturing Ltd in Kami-Itabashi in 1954 In 1952 Yoshino wanted to try building a camera once more but realised that a better workshop was needed. They failed to do so, but to improve their skill and workmanship the workshop started producing delicate fashion accessories made of metal, such as metal cigarette cases, brooches, lighters and women’s compacts (portable beauty accessory with powder and mirror). Thus behind the shop’s premises the 新光堂製作所 - Shinkoudou Manufacturing workshop was established in 1947, with the primary intention to design and manufacture cameras. Nonetheless Yoshino grew tired of simply buying and selling cameras. The shop was a viable business and prospering. Despite the hard times of the post-war era, many still affluent Japanese would sell off their cameras to buy the latest models.
In 1946, Yoshino opened a used camera store called 新光堂写真機店 - Shinkoudou Shashinki-ten in Kanda-Tachō (神田多町), the ward of Chiyoda in Tokyo. He admired Victor Hasselblad, the Swedish inventor and photographer, known for developing the modular Hasselblad 6×6 cm medium format camera. Yoshino began to be known as a real camera mania, an obsessive photo enthusiast. Being from a wealthy family he was certainly in a position to afford the expensive hobby of photography. Why he got interested in cameras is not clear, but he was known to enjoy a stroll over Ginza and looking at the various camera stores there. However, in the aftermath of WW II and the resulting US occupational forces’ rice rationing and control over rice distribution he was keen to expand and diversify the business into new areas. Yoshino initially continued his family’s rice business. Zenzaburo Yoshino was born in 1911 as the third son of a prosperous rice dealer, which even at that time had over 150 employees. It was to become a widely used camera family, not least by recording millions of weddings shot on medium format film. Zenza was in America to sell his camera, the Zenza Bronica. Keppler, who passed away in 2008, was a driving force behind the success of the Japanese camera industry. Zenza” came to the USA and had lunch with Burt Keppler, the former well-known publisher of Modern Photography and Popular Photography magazines in the United States and one of the most respected and influential figures in the history of the camera industry. Advertising of the Zenza Bronica D in a magazine in September 1959 (昭和34年9月) as “The Rolls-Royce of Cameras”Īt around 1960, a man the Americans called “Mr.