We were highly interested to hear from the European press office for Fujitsu ICL Computers Ltd about the longtime friendly relations between Japan’s Fujitsu Ltd and Germany’s Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, in light of today’s announcement on supercomputer cooperation. It turns out that Fujitsu and Siemens have a relationship going right back to the beginning, in fact part of the Fujitsu name actually comes from Siemens. In an interview at the CeBIT technology fair in Hannover, Germany, earlier this year Fujitsu’s Chairman Takuma Yamamoto revealed that Fujitsu has a long history of partnership with Germany. You may not know this but the Fuji in our name is our parent company, Fuji Electric, which was formed by our grandparent companies Furukawa and Siemens. (Fu is for Furukawa and Ji is for Siemens, you see, Siemens sounds like Jimenzu in Japanese). German management from Siemens were the only non-Japanese to ever serve on Fujitsu’s board of directors, six decades ago. How interesting that the two great trading companies were as close partners as their parent nations, since this was around the same time (1936) that Nazi Germany and the ultra-nationalist military-led government of Imperial Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact with Italy, allying themselves in preparation for World War II. Given that such unpleasantness is not a topic of conversation in Japan, where only the most meager mentions of the War are allowed in schoolbooks, perhaps Chairman Yamamoto can be forgiven for thinking this historical reference to be a good thing.
