A Yashima SLR

I may be able to fill in some of the blanks... Yoshimasa Ushiyama started Yashima/Yashica, and he had a brother who was president of (for lack of a proper term) a spin-off company, known as Yashima Optical LTD, and it was headquartered in Tokyo. The company did produce one SLR camera during its corporate lifetime, and it may have had several labels and models/names attributed to it, from rebranding to other 3rd party sellers. I suspect that this is one of them, as the body looks identical in almost every respect - with the exception of the name tag and ad copy on the mirror box. The fact that it has an inscribed slogan is an oddity in itself, for any camera of the same period.

The Yashima Osanon Digital 750 was also labeled as the EMC 750, but despite the "Digital" in its name, it wasn't computerized in some fashion... it just was a term they used instead of 'Electronic'. I assume they're rare, and probably not seen anywhere other than Japan, so my guess would be that there's a collector somewhere that wants it bad enough for his/her shelf, that they'll pay dearly to get it. I know it's barely more than a basic M42 screw mount SLR, so it rides on the wave of rarity alone, and not on any film-based superpower of technical advancement.

BTW... I'm starting to suspect that Yashima Optical LTD is one in the same company that produced some of the microscopes mentioned in the brochures section quite some time ago. There are starting to be several threads that weave together to show they were a supplier to Yashica for Cine lenses for 8mm (from the post by biggles3 here: yashica.boards.net/post/7214/thread) that presumably went along in some part with the copyright assignment for one of Yashica's early 8mm cameras. So it seems that Yashica as a company may not have been just a simple renaming, but Yashima actually split into 2 companies, owned by 2 brothers. One may have become more famous in the consumer market, but only one of them is still in operation.

Hi. 

Many thanks for the information on Yashima and the brothers. 

The camera sold for $81 - I backed out at the prior bid of around $70.  Of course, what we will never know was just how high the winning bidder may have been prepared to go had one kept one's hand in the auction.  I will continue to keep a watching brief for either of the two recognised Yashima models.  It was a single bidder so now that his thirst has been slaked, hopefully the next one will prove more realistic in price.

30,000 Yen??? Given that it's value is in the historical details and not the fabulosity of the hardware... there's not a 3+ digit purchase price I'd be willing to part with, under anyone's currency.

(Well... 999 Yen is only $8.21 as of today, so I might let go of those 3 figures.)

Try this


web.archive.org/web/20070828040639/http://homepage3.nifty.com/01camera/subpage25.html

There is one fundamental error in those details. The president of Yashima was not the former president of Yashica (Yoshimasa Ushiyama), but was instead,  his brother, Jisaburo. (See Paul Sokk's page on 'People' and this article on Camera-Wiki). The younger brother was part of Yashica in the early years but went on to a company split from Yashica (or otherwise 'morphed from it).