Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

The story of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries begins on the Nagasaki waterfront. In 1857, at the request of the Tokugawa shogunate, a group of Dutch engineers including the naval engineer Hendrik Hardes arrived with machine tools and materials to build a Western-style foundry near the Dutch settlement of Dejima. The Nagasaki Yotetsusho, intended as Japan's first warship repair facility, was redesigned as an ironworks in 1860 under the name Nagasaki Seitetsusho and completed in 1861. The new Meiji government took it over in 1868, and its first dry dock opened in 1879.

The decisive step came in 1884. Mitsubishi founder Iwasaki Yatarō leased the works from the state, renamed them Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works and moved into shipbuilding on a large scale. The yard's official chronology dates this foundation to 7 July 1884, and MHI itself traces its origin to that year. Mitsubishi bought the shipyard outright in 1887. Docks, slipways and cranes multiplied over the following decades, and in 1917 the business was transferred to a company of its own, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering. This portal therefore uses 1884 as the founding year: it marks the birth of the organisation that, through a series of renamings, became today's MHI, whereas 1857 belongs to the shogunate's facility.

The aviation branch grew separately. In 1920 Mitsubishi set up an internal-combustion engine subsidiary in Nagoya, Mitsubishi Nainenki, which signed a technology agreement with Germany's Junkers in 1925. A year later it was already one of Japan's largest aircraft makers, with an output of 69 aircraft and 70 engines. In 1928 it took the name Mitsubishi Aircraft to reflect its new role, and in 1932 it was drawn into the consolidation driven by the Imperial Japanese Navy's Aviation Arsenal.

Its early designs included naval types such as the 1MF carrier biplane fighter of 1923 and the 1MT triplane torpedo bomber of 1922; the 1MF9 of 1927 lost out to the Nakajima A1N, and the 1MF10 of 1933 was already a monoplane.

The two branches came together in 1934. According to the company's Japanese history, Iwasaki Koyata, the fourth head of the group, decided to merge shipbuilding and aviation to restore the finances of loss-making subsidiaries: in April Mitsubishi Shipbuilding renamed itself Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and in June it absorbed Mitsubishi Aircraft. The Japanese term for "heavy industries" is said to have been coined by Koyata himself from the English phrase. The Kobe shipyard joined that same year and the Yokohama dockyard was absorbed in 1935. The new company built ships, heavy machinery, aircraft and railway cars.

In the run-up to the war Mitsubishi became a pillar of Japanese military production, which rose from 400 aircraft in 1931 to 4,800 in 1941 and peaked at 24,000 in 1944. Some forty models for the Imperial Army and Navy came out of its design offices. The company's list of aircraft dates the G3M twin-engine medium bomber and torpedo bomber to 1935, and the A5M carrier fighter entered service in 1936; the Army received the Ki-21 heavy bomber and the Ki-30 light bomber in 1938. The year 1940 brought the long-range A6M Zero carrier fighter and the G4M bomber, 1941 the Ki-46 reconnaissance aircraft, 1942 the J2M Raiden and A7M Reppū fighters, and 1944 the Ki-67 Hiryū bomber. The Zero was developed at Komaki, the same site where the MRJ regional jet would be born decades later.

The Nagasaki yard, meanwhile, delivered the battleship Musashi in 1942, and the Kobe yard built the liner Argentina Maru, later converted into the aircraft carrier Kaiyo.

Japan's defeat brought the dissolution of the zaibatsu. A break-up order was issued in June 1949, and in January 1950 MHI was split into three regional companies: West Japan Heavy Industries around Nagasaki, Central Japan Heavy Industries around Kobe and East Japan Heavy Industries around Yokohama. When the occupation ended on 28 April 1952 the ban on zaibatsu names was lifted, and on 7 May 1952 all three took the Mitsubishi name again. Their product lines increasingly overlapped and, despite criticism that it meant the return of the zaibatsu, the three merged in 1964 to form today's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

During the 1950s the company re-entered the aerospace industry in earnest. For the Self-Defense Forces it built North American F-86 Sabre, Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighters under licence.

Work on the MU-2, Mitsubishi's first post-war design, started in 1956: a light twin turboprop for civil and military roles that first flew on 14 September 1963. That same year Mitsubishi granted Mooney the rights to assemble and sell it in North America; a line opened in San Angelo, Texas, in 1965, receiving major components from Japan, and in 1969, with Mooney in financial trouble, Mitsubishi took the plant over. US production ended in 1986 and the last Japanese-built aircraft was completed in January 1987, for a total of 704, making the MU-2 one of post-war Japan's most successful aircraft.

In defence, MHI has built jet fighters for the Air Self-Defense Force and anti-submarine helicopters for the Maritime Self-Defense Force, as well as aero-engines, missiles and torpedoes. Its range includes the T-2 trainer and the F-1 and F-2 combat aircraft. From 1981 it built 139 F-15J fighters under licence, and from 1989 another 200 helicopters of the Sikorsky S-70 family, the Mitsubishi H-60. The company also plays an important part in Japan's ballistic missile defence programme.

In commercial aviation MHI has established itself as a maker of large airframe components, including fuselage panels for the Boeing 777 and composite wing boxes for the 787. In June 2014 it joined four other major Japanese companies in an agreement to build parts for the 777X. Its aerospace facilities are in Nagoya, Komaki and Mississauga, Canada.

Space followed a path much like aviation. The N-I, N-II and H-I launchers were built under licence from McDonnell Douglas; then came the H-II and its successor, the H-IIA, developed and operated by MHI together with JAXA. The H-IIA made a successful debut from Tanegashima on 29 August 2001. On 1 April 2007 JAXA handed management and production over to MHI, and Flight 13, carrying the SELENE lunar orbiter, became the first mission under private operation. The rocket flew 50 times, with 49 successes and a run of 44 in a row between 2003 and 2025, before retiring on 28 June 2025. Its derivative, the H-IIB, with two LE-7A engines in the first stage, first flew on 10 September 2009 and was retired in 2020.

Its replacement is the H3, developed with JAXA and approved by the government on 17 May 2013. MHI is the prime contractor, oversees final assembly and developed the propulsion system with JAXA, built around the new LE-9 engine designed to cut launch costs. Problems with the LE-9 pushed the debut back from 2021: a first attempt in February 2023 was aborted on the pad, and the flight of 7 March 2023 was lost when the second stage failed to ignite. On 17 February 2024 the H3 achieved its first successful flight. MHI also sells launch services to customers such as JAXA, Korea's KARI, the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre and Inmarsat, and takes part in the International Space Station as a cargo spacecraft contractor; its space portfolio includes the Kibo module and the H-II Transfer Vehicle.

On 28 March 2008 MHI formally launched the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, a 70-to-90-seat airliner, with an initial order from All Nippon Airways, and on 1 April 2008 it created the subsidiary Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation to develop and build it at Komaki. It was the first Japanese airliner since the YS-11. Delays piled up: the first flight, at one point expected in 2012, did not happen until 11 November 2015, and much of the test campaign moved to Moses Lake, Washington. Four of the five postponements were caused at least in part by failures to document work for certification.

The aircraft was renamed SpaceJet and, to strengthen it, MHI announced on 25 June 2019 the purchase of Bombardier's CRJ programme, whose unit became MHI RJ Aviation Group. Losses in FY 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic led to flight testing being halted in May 2020 and the programme being put on hold in October. On 6 February 2023 MHI cancelled the SpaceJet for good, abandoned its plans to enter the jetliner business and liquidated the subsidiary, renamed MSJ Asset Management Company in April 2023. The SpaceJet's cost even reached other businesses: in 2017 the company left the manufacture of SCMaglev magnetic-levitation train cars.