At this time, with the good favor and support of all of you, I am pleased to assume the leadership of the Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers. The Institute has a long and worthy history in the field of television technology, and it is truly a great honor for me. I also feel the heavy responsibility that comes with this position. In the Institute’s operations, I intend to bring together the efforts and capabilities of all members, and I would like ask for your cooperation in this endeavor.

Japan’s television technology started in 1926 with an electronic television in which Kenjiro Takayanagi succeeded in displaying an image of the Japanese character ‘イ’ on a Braun tube. Overseas, in 1925, John Logie Baird had developed a mechanical television in England. We can see then that Japan has been a world leader in television technology from the very beginning.

The present-day Institute developed out of an association of persons interested in television that Professor Takayanagi created for ‘research and discussion of television technology and its principles.’ On April 1, 1950, this association was officially inaugurated as the Institute of Television. In 2010, the Institute, whose DNA goes all the way back to Professor Takayanagi’s first broadcast of the letter ‘イ,’ will commemorate its sixtieth anniversary. These sixty years in Japan have seen the broadcast of black and white television in 1953 and the start of color broadcasting in the 1960s, as television technology came into its own and blossomed at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Since then, high vision television, satellite broadcasting, and digital television have been developed, and, as members of the Institute well know, Japan is now the world leader in television technology. Another significant development in this period was that we changed the Institute’s name in 1996 to The Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers. This name change has meant that the Institute has greatly expanded the technical fields it deals with to include all image, information, and media technology, in addition to television technology.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Institute is its broad membership, from persons in many different areas of research and development in broadcast technology, media information, image electronics, and content, to persons who deal with practical applications and services in these areas. It is also no exaggeration to say that the development of image information services today is a result of activities carried out mainly by members of this Institute in bringing together and focusing their efforts in all of these different areas