Untold development story
Person in charge of development
Tomio Sato

Just try!
The development of the body fat scale was entrusted to a man in his first year of employment.

Obesity was once judged by how much you weigh. On one occasion, the then president listened to a medical specialist saying that obesity means that you have too much fat on you, not that you weigh too much. That made him issue a development order for an instrument to measure body fat for his employees. This was not a major theme but simply started as a training theme for new employees like me. I remember being bemused and thinking that I would just try while knowing I was new there. At that time, underwater weighing was the only way to measure fat accurately, but the method was laborious and time-consuming. Days of trial and error started since we needed to make it simple like a scale. The measuring method I finally established was a method to derive an estimated value of the fat amount by utilizing the characteristics of fat that conduct very little electricity. Since human body data for a wide range of ages and physical constitutions was required to create a calculation formula for deriving an estimated value, I worked hard to collect them every day. Finally, the world’s first body fat scale was successfully developed in 1992. It was sold to individuals and families and spread the new body fat percentage index around the world.

Underwater weighing

Impact on the world
Person in charge of sales
Hiroki Matsumoto

People’s health awareness started to change drastically as the body fat percentage index spread.

The very first body fat scale released was for business use and was very expensive, costing 485,000 yen. However, it was highly regarded concerning usability because body fat could be measuring by simply standing on the body fat scale; medical facilities including university research institutes and health examination centers welcomed it. Soon after, the body fat scale became popular after products for family use were released in the price range between 20,000 and 30,000 yen. Simultaneously, the term body fat percentage rapidly spread out. As use of the body fat scale became widespread, health goods such as pedometers and dumbbells came into the spotlight since exercises for reducing body fat started to attract people's attention. When I saw a health goods section set up in a shop, I was surprised at how fast the trend to respond to body fat was. People’s health awareness started to drastically change.

Untold development story
Person in charge of development
Miyuki Nishizawa

Visceral fat level was the expression we decided on to familiarize people with it.

In around 1992 we released the body fat scale and research showing that visceral fat increases the risk of diseases the most among the fats in the belly, which came to draw much attention from specialists. Under this influence, the development of the visceral fat meter started as a mission with our company’s highest priority. The area calculation was to be applied to the visceral fat meter whereas the density calculation was for the body fat scale. Many analyses were made over and over while considering a variety of possibilities. The total number of people whose body data were collected for this development was 764. We now have body data for more than 100,000 people. Discussion on how we could deliver the product to customers became quite lively when the release date of the product was getting closer. Visceral fat level was the expression we concluded on then. We decided to suggest an index that users could easily understand but not to indicate an estimated area value as a concrete numeric value. Since this suggestion was approved of, we could have introduced an easy-to-understand index and released a product that enables measurement with this index.

Impact on the world
Person in charge of sales
Akira Uchikoshi

New product familiarization triggered people to change their health awareness.

Nobody even seemed to care when the product was released in the beginning. So, we implemented promotions at stores to familiarize the public with the product as well as conducting sales activities at various locations to enable people to recognize what visceral fat was. The CT scanner was then the only machine that could measure visceral fat. However, the visceral fat level can be easily checked at home. This was the major point that enabled customers to easily purchase the InnerScan. As the product became familiar to people, sales increased as well as inquiries from customers on visceral fat. The term metabolic syndrome appeared. Many TV programs and newspapers covered this; the visceral fat level became one trigger that changed people’s health awareness.

Untold development story
Person in charge of development
Tomoka Uchiyama

New concept for muscles is visualizing muscle quality, not quantity.

This new index originated from an event that I was really concerned about when I was working as part of a national research program on incurable diseases. It was then commonly accepted that the amount of muscles was proportional to muscular strength. However, some events that could not be explained by changes or differences in the amount of muscles occurred. For example, the amount of muscles of some middle-aged or elderly people who used to exercise were not decreasing even though their muscular strength was actually weakening. During discussions with experts while thinking about the electric characteristics together, we concluded that the reason may be muscle quality. From that point, our development focused on muscle quality evaluation and we were determined to create an index. However, converting this mystifying concept into a simple one that could be explained in plain language was very difficult. After many arguments inside and outside of my department, an idea to express it with a score-type index that is easy to understand was realized, but not with simple numeric values. Thus, the world’s first body composition monitor that can display muscle quality score was created.

Impact on the world
Person in charge of advertising
Shunsuke Tomimasu

Introducing the index recognized in the sports field to more people.

I sensed a certain reaction in evaluating the novel index since around 70 press members gathered for the press release of the world’s first index for muscle quality. After that, models that could check body parts such as the muscle quality of both arms or both legs were released. We received many inquiries about them from people in sports and these models were used to manage athlete training and conditioning. We actually heard from athletes that it changed their perception of muscles or that it changed their training methods. Muscle quality score can also exert its potential even for the body development or health management of ordinary people. For example, since muscle quality changes frequently, it can be useful even for women and the elderly, who have difficulties in increasing their muscles and maintaining motivation to continue exercising. Therefore, from now on, we’d also like to focus on promotions to have many more people know what muscle quality score is.