Founded in 1946,
RISO KAGAKU CORPORATION
celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2026.

In the summer of 1945, just two weeks after being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Japanese Army, founder Noboru Hayama saw Japan lose the war. He enrolled at university to train as a teacher. To cover his tuition and support his family, he also put up a sign at his home in Setagaya, Tokyo, for a mimeograph printing business he named RISO-SHA, after the Japanese word for ideals. The name came straight from his own resolve: “At a time when no one knows what will become of Japan, people should not lose their ideals. Whatever happens, we must always pursue our ideals to ensure the future.” In 1948, the business was renamed RISO PRINTING. Hayama had fallen for mimeograph printing, a trade in which sincerity and ingenuity showed directly in the results, and on graduation he decided to carry on in business.

RISO PRINTING introduced British-made printing equipment. The process required a dedicated emulsion ink—a scarce commodity available only through imports. On his way to collect a supply by scooter one day, Hayama was involved in an accident that left him with a fracture and a hospital stay. Lying in his hospital bed, he reasoned it through. The business would never grow while it depended on imported ink, so he decided to develop one himself. He built a laboratory at his home and, after repeated trial and error, produced RISO INK, the first emulsion ink developed in Japan. That was the moment RISO took its first step toward becoming a printing equipment manufacturer devoted to creating fundamentally unique products.

Mimeograph printing, known in Japan as gariban, required each stencil to be cut by hand with a steel stylus, which made master making slow and laborious. The idea that changed this was master making by light, applying the principle by which a magnifying glass concentrates the sun’s rays until paper scorches and burns through. Research along these lines produced the RISO FAX thermal master making device and the RISO MASTER stencil. At the time, cutting a master normally took five to ten minutes. A machine that finished the job in seconds seemed almost magical, and at the launch event, crowds packed around the demonstration unit.

In 1968, RISO accepted a request from a global company selling thermal master making devices to supply RISO MASTER on an OEM basis, and sales climbed sharply. Then the orders stopped altogether, and the company was pushed to the brink of collapse. To keep it alive, Hayama staked everything on developing new products. In 1972 he completed two of them: the RISO OHP 750, a genuinely innovative piece of audiovisual equipment, and the RISO TRAPEN-UP TU-230, a master making device for overhead projector transparencies. Both transformed the way lessons were taught and meetings run, in schools and offices alike. Together they carried the company through the crisis.

RISO developed a simple home printing machine around a single idea: bringing master making and printing together in one mechanism. In an era when New Year’s cards were typically made with potato stamps or zodiac-animal rubber stamps, PRINT GOCCO overturned every expectation. The gokko in its name refers to children’s games of make-believe, a way of passing Japanese culture and sensibility from parent to child and something of an education in itself. Hayama chose the name in the hope that parents and children would enjoy playing at printing together. PRINT GOCCO was an explosive success from launch, passing ten million units sold within twenty years and becoming a year-end fixture in the Japanese households.

RISO had developed its own master making devices and emulsion inks, but the printers then in general use ran on oil-based ink. No single consumable could suit every machine, and it was frustrating to watch the company’s products perform below their potential. If that was the situation, Hayama concluded, RISO would have to build the printers as well, and in-house development began. It proved extremely difficult. The company put its design through what was then regarded as the outer limit of durability, a run of one million sheets. After repeated trial and error, the RISOGRAPH was born. The challenge lifted RISO to the rank of a comprehensive printing equipment manufacturer, and it was the moment the company’s spirit of creative manufacturing took shape.

Already highly regarded in Japan, the RISOGRAPH went on show at major trade fairs overseas, where the response was overwhelmingly positive and gave the company real confidence. Dealers abroad lined up to sell it, yet RISO did not immediately take the step into overseas expansion. Selling printers was not the point. Customers could only use them with confidence if consumables arrived reliably and repairs were handled quickly, and that meant putting the sales and service network in place first. Doing thoroughly what a manufacturer is simply expected to do was a principle the company would not compromise on, even with the whole world as its market.

Hayama wanted the RISOGRAPH put to work in schools around the world, for the sake of the children who would shape the future. It was that conviction that set RISO’s overseas expansion in motion.
It began in 1986 in Massachusetts, in the United States, and sales bases followed steadily across Europe and Asia. Today, RISO products are used by educational institutions, government offices, businesses, local communities, and others in more than 190 countries and regions, including Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

RISO took master making from the analog thermal process into the digital domain. In 1986, it launched the RISOGRAPH 007 DIGITAL, with greatly expanded master making capability, and a new era in stencil printing began.
The shift to digital opened other doors. In 1988, the company developed a system that connected the RISOGRAPH to word processors, then the mainstay of office document creation, allowing files to be printed directly from them. That technology later grew into printing systems that printed directly from a PC.

RISO completed the Kasumigaura Plant in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1965 and steadily built out its domestic manufacturing base from there, adding the Tsukuba Plant, also in Ibaraki, in 1981 and the Ube Plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1986. To meet still greater demand, the company opened its first overseas production base in 1999, a plant in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China. Plants in Shenzhen, China, and the Rojana Industrial Park in Ayutthaya, Thailand, followed as RISO shifted to a global production structure.

In the late 1990s, the office printer was still predominantly monochrome, and color printing was expensive and slow. RISO brought together a line-type inkjet print head, a newly developed oil-based pigment ink and the high-speed paper feed technology it had refined on the RISOGRAPH. The result was the ORPHIS HC5000, a high-speed inkjet printer that put color printing comfortably within everyday reach. Developed jointly with Olympus Corporation, ORPHIS has gone on setting new records for the fastest print speed of any office printer in the world ever since.

Screen printing can put an image on fabric, plastic, metal, and a wide range of other materials. Drawing on the master making technology it had built up over the years, RISO developed GOCCOPRO, a digital screen maker that produces silk screen masters as easily as running a printer. It requires no specialist skills or equipment and turns out screen printing masters quickly and at low cost. Alongside custom prints on T-shirts and team apparel, it has found wide use in creative fields such as textile design.

Kesennuma City, in Miyagi Prefecture, was devastated by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Power was out for more than two weeks in all but a few areas, leaving residents with no way of knowing the situation around them or in their town. A local newspaper distributor stepped in, publishing a special disaster edition four days after the earthquake so that people in evacuation centers and those still in their homes could share information. It was published day after day, helping residents stay in touch with one another. The distributor was printing on a RISOGRAPH, and RISO supplied the paper and ink, supporting an effort that brought the community both information and reassurance.

The Energy Conservation Center, Japan (ECCJ) sponsors the annual Energy Conservation Grand Prize. In its FY2013 Product & Business Model Category, the ORPHIS EX Series of high-speed inkjet printers received the ECCJ Chairman’s Award. ORPHIS had long delivered added value in high-volume printing through speed and low running costs. For this series, RISO reexamined standby power consumption in sleep mode and developed technologies such as a high-speed feeding system for lightweight paper and inks suited to duplex printing, achieving strong energy-saving performance while maintaining high-speed output. Beyond speed and cost, the series proved its environmental credentials.

The Riso Research and Design Center opened in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, in June 2013. Bringing together development departments that had been spread across separate sites, it was designed to accelerate the flow of information and the pace of development, and to make communication between teams easier. Since then, the company has continued to build an environment that moves a product swiftly from development through commercialization and sales channel planning, and out to customers worldwide. It is from this center, where the technical and development strength behind a long line of groundbreaking products is now concentrated, that RISO will create the next generation of fundamentally unique products.

The 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) was held in Paris. As an official partner of the conference at which the Paris Agreement was adopted, RISO FRANCE S.A. supplied eight ORPHIS EX Series high-speed inkjet printers. They handled some three million printed sheets, including the agreement and treaty documents used at the conference, and United Nations officials praised ORPHIS for combining high productivity and reliability with energy-saving performance.

RISO responded quickly when COVID-19 emerged at the end of 2019. Prioritizing employee safety in all operations, the company gathered information from around the world and worked to put safeguards in place and keep everyone informed. Under these circumstances, the company moved meetings and sales activity online and kept the business running with safety as the overriding priority. Above all, it held to the conviction that duplicators and printers are social infrastructure supporting communication, and it never stopped delivering products to its customers.

In June 2020, RISO completed RISO R&D Center II in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. Along with laboratories, it houses a multipurpose room displaying the company’s products, a coworking space for joint research with outside partners, and more, enabling developers to nurture free thinking. Through this development site, RISO will continue to strengthen the development of new products and services for customers around the world.

The inkjet business began in 2003 with the ORPHIS high-speed inkjet printer, and continues to grow as a pillar of the company. Launched in 2020, the FT Series strengthened data rendering so that even data-heavy documents print quickly from the very first page, aiming to set a new standard for office printers. The GL Series followed in 2021 and raised the world’s fastest print speed to 165 pages per minute in simplex.^* Five newly developed inks also gave it smoother gradations than earlier models.

* Available on GL9730. A4 long-edge feed, simplex, continuous printing in standard density setting, and using the Face Down Tray.

RISO launched VALEZUS T2100 in March 2021, as the first product under its new VALEZUS brand. This full-color, high-speed cut-sheet inkjet printer delivers 320 pages per minute in duplex.^* It was built for high-volume work such as commercial printing, data print service output, and business form printing at private companies and government offices, and it marked RISO’s entry into the production printer market. VALEZUS T2200 followed in 2022 with a duplex print speed of 330 pages per minute,^* meeting the needs of customers around the world.

* A4 long-edge feed, default print setting, and using plain paper and recycled paper (85 gsm (23-lb bond)).

In April 2021, RISO launched Sukurire, a digital tool for contact between schools and families, inspired by the problems that needed solving in education. It is now used by 2,500 schools and more than one million parents and guardians.^*In 2023, RISO launched Yomiyas, a tool that automatically assesses how easy a document is to see and read. DigiPal followed in 2025, a digital teaching material that helps children build information literacy. RISO is committed to providing products and services that benefit its customers through a wide range of technologies.

* As of August 2026.

RISO established RISO TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION as a subsidiary in April 2024, and that July, the new company acquired the inkjet printhead business of Toshiba Tec Corporation. Guided by its corporate philosophy, “Enriching societies and lifestyles by unique technologies," the company will drive inkjet innovation from its main development and manufacturing site in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture.

In December 2024, RISO began rolling out Integlide, an inkjet print engine launched as a new brand. This marked the company’s entry into a new market: package printing. Born out of an analysis of the practical challenges facing packaging companies and printer manufacturers, Integlide enables on-demand printing to be flexibly integrated into a wide range of production environments and optimizes the package printing workflow.

The ORPHIS GN Series of high-speed inkjet printers arrived in 2026 with the world’s fastest print speed, 180 pages per minute in simplex.^* New inks and a new printhead give it deeper, more vivid color than earlier models. Scanning, copying, and the various optional units have all been made faster as well, which makes the GN Series ideal for customers with heavy printing workloads.

* Available on GN9830, GN9831, and GN9830 Premium. A4 long-edge feed, simplex, continuous printing in standard density setting, and using the Face Down Tray. Based on office color printers using cut sheet commercially available as of April 2026 (Source: Data Supply Inc.). Product availability and launch dates may vary by region.

Since its launch in 1980, the RISOGRAPH, a digital duplicator that handles high-volume printing at speed and at low cost, has been widely used in schools and offices not only in Japan, but around the world. The SJ Series of 2026 made refinements such as optimizing the transport mechanism and the transport speed inside the machine, reaching a top print speed of 200 pages per minute.^* Feedback from schools also brought a considerable improvement in operability, leading to the development of a product that is more useful still.

* If the temperature of the inside of the print drum (cylinder) is less than 15°C (59°F), [200ppm] is not usable.

RISO began as a mimeograph printing business on September 2, 1946, and celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. Its flagship products, the ORPHIS high-speed inkjet printer and the RISOGRAPH digital duplicator, are widely used in over 190 countries and regions. RISO has also expanded into new business fields in recent years, meeting customer needs as they change from day to day. Guided by its development policy of “Creating fundamentally unique products,” RISO will continue to create products and services that serve you.