CHIKUSUI CANYCOM, INC., a manufacturer of brushcutters and carrier vehicles

Succeeding his family business of blacksmith, Yoshito Kaneyuki began mass producing sickles, dreaming of expanding his business beyond mere blacksmith. His products sported mark.

At that time, all trailers are of tubular construction. Sheetmetal construction had advantages in not only the cost but also the appearances. This was the time when the Japanese agriculture began transforming from "crawling" (manual labor in the rice field) to "walking" (with walk-behind machines) and "riding" (on more sofisticated ride-on machines).

We chose red to be the color to show "burning Chikusui". The photo is from the annual corporate conference.

In Japan, almost all forests are in the steep mountain ranges. At the time, it was a common practice to use a horse to pull logs out of forests. It was a veryhard and dangerous work. There was a strong request for the safe and efficient machine for this work. We felt it was our duty to answer to this request, resulting in the "Yamabiko" forestry carrier, the first of its kind of machines.

Under the guidance of Prof. Ainoura of the Kurume National College of Technology, an international expert oftransmission, we developed our first in-house transmission. This technology still lives on in our latest transmission.

Named after the popular singing group at the time, the Pink Lady series now comprise of 40% of our total sales.
When it first came out, our dealers' response to its name was polarized, but now it has become synonymous with the small crawler-carrier thanks to its overwhelming popularity.

In the same year, forestry carrier "Yamabiko" won the Forestry Agency Secretary Award.

CI Presentation ceremony was held on the 5th of September. The name of the company was changed to "CHIKUSUI CANYCOM, INC.", and the new corporate song was presented. This new song, "Minnano Shiawase," was specially composed by Mr. Asei Kobayashi, famous for the songs such as "Renown Wansaka Musume" and "Pinponpan Taiso," and the TV serial, "Terauchi Kantaro Ikka." And its lyiric was written by Mr. Akira Ito of the "Konoki Nannoki Kininaruki" fame.

The picture on the right shows Mr. Kobayashi conducting the CANYCOM singers (our staff).

The typhoon 19 in particular landed on Nagasaki and ran up along Japan, leaving severe damages (62 deaths, 1,499 injuries and 157 landslides). Yamabiko's achievements in cleaning the damages raised its recognition and profile in the industry.

Since its beginning in 1979, Yamabiko steadily won the trust of the industry and recorded the 400,000th production this year.
The photo on the right shows the delivery of Yamabikos for cleaning the typhoon damages.

Hitoshi Kaneyuki (current president) came up with an idea of a dumper that "turns like a carousel in the amusement park," leading to a development of the swivel dumper (Carousel Dump) product.

"Fun to Drive" and "Fun to Work" were the concept. With the go-cart in mind, we developed the new brushcutter, "Masao."

The brushcutter was a new addition to our business portfolio, introducing us to the whole new opportunities.

The professional brushcutters used on the river banks at the time were very troublesome, necessitating to stop as often as once every two hours. Bush Cutter George was developed in response to the request from clients to address this problem and to realize long time trouble-free operation. With the World's first automatically leveling platform "Kamome" and tractive rubber crawlers, Bush Cutter George made professional brushcutting easier and more efficient.

On December 29th, we celebrated our 50th anniversary of incorporation at our company. On May 9th next year, we invited our stockholders, supporters and friends in the industry and local administration to Harazuru Onsen to thank their support. The photo on the left shows the founder Yoshito Kaneyuki (current chairman) giving an address of gratitude on Dec. 9th.

The first multi-carrier with high-power electric generator, "Dendou Yoshimi" (EG60) won the 4th prize in the business category at the 17th Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun Naming Prize.