Hitachi color TV console advertising postcard, c. 1970. Back caption: “Japan’s beloved Momotaro (the boy born from a peach) and his animal friends with a Hitachi television set.”

See also:
Hitachi table fan, c. 1930.

“Television in Japan was first introduced in 1939. However, experiments there dated back to the 1920s with Kenjiro Takayanagi’s pioneering work with electronic television. In 1924, Kenjiro Takayanagi began a research program on electronic television. In 1925, he demonstrated a cathode ray tube (CRT) television with thermal electron emission. Television tests were conducted in 1926 using a combined mechanical Nipkow disk and electronic Braun tube system.

“In 1926, he demonstrated a CRT television with 40-line resolution, the first working example of a fully electronic television receiver. In 1927, he increased the television resolution to 100 lines, which was unrivaled until 1931. In 1928, he was the first to transmit human faces in half-tones on television.

“Experimental television broadcasting was halted by World War II after which, in 1950, regular television broadcasts was begun. In 1953, the public NHK General TV and the commercial Nippon Television were launched in the span of a few months. At that time, there were only 3,000 television sets. By the year following the royal wedding of Crown Prince Akihito in 1959, the number of sets had rapidly increased to 12 million.

“After Japan developed the first HDTV systems in the 1960s, MUSE/Hi-Vision was introduced in the 1970s.”

– Wikipedia