Casio Mourns Passing of Co-Founder Kazuo Kashio

Kazuo Kashio, one of the four brothers who founded the consumer electronics and synthesizer manufacturer, Casio Computer Co., has died at age 89, the company said earlier today.

Mr. Kashio, who was chairman and served previously as president, died at a Tokyo hospital on Monday of aspiration pneumonia.

A Wall Street Journal article credits Mr. Kashio with making the calculator a ubiquitous product through Casio Mini. He also helped popularize the G-Shock watch, which had its commercial debut in 1983.

Kazuo Kashio succeeded his older brother Tadao, who served as Casio’s second president. The first president was the brothers’ father.

The Kashio family founded the Japanese electronics-maker in 1957, and commercialized the world’s first all-electric compact calculator.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Kazuo Kashio’s motto was that a company must keep reinventing itself to survive, pursuing “continual change.”

“By breaking free from preconceptions and conventional notions, we have conceived products that are truly needed and used our digital technologies to make them a reality,” he said in one of his messages as chairman. “Products based on new ideas create new markets.”

Kazuo Kashio is survived by his wife Soko and two daughters and a son, Casio President Kazuhiro Kashio.

9 thoughts on “Casio Mourns Passing of Co-Founder Kazuo Kashio

  1. They should follow his wishes and come out with some cool new stuff. I vote on a new type of synthesis….or combine the Phase Distortion technology with the Spectrum Dynamic Synthesis method and create a super synth.

  2. Casio has always seemed a bit creatively cockeyed, but I’m one of three friends who wear G-Shock watches (they’re damned tough), I got a lot of FM-type goodness out of my old CZ-101 and their PX5s “stage piano” is also a massive synth under the hood. Kashio had a lively sense of creativity that deserves a bow.

  3. For a few years my live setup included two CZ-1000s, awesome little synths that I also layered with my analog keys in the studio.

  4. I have many Casio keyboards and other Casio products and I will say this. Over all Casio products have ashtrays caught my attention because they always do something or look like something a little different from anything else. Thanks for your company Mr. Kashio

  5. Casio gear was and still is cool. It usually takes a while for the public to appreciate but they usually do sooner or later.

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