In the early years of the last century, long-established German companies dominated the world of film cameras. Brands like Leitz and Zeiss were giants and were celebrated for their precision engineering and optical performance.

Japan, on the other hand, was a nation emerging from isolation and experiencing rapid growth and structural change. Lacking the natural resources necessary to feed an emerging industrialized nation, it had expanded its territories and much of the country’s manufacturing was devoted to further intensifying military power. Many of today’s best-known Japanese camera manufacturers started out as suppliers of optical equipment to the Armed Forces (making things like binoculars, sights, and periscopes).

The end of World War II changed everything for the two nations. The camera industry in Germany was in shambles. Worse still, the division of Germany into two zones physically separated the manufacturing plants. In the west, Leitz survived intact, but others in the east were further decimated by the Russian government. Zeiss tools and equipment were even removed and relocated to revitalize the Soviet camera industry.

Leitz was able to survive because he innovated and specialized. In 1954, less than ten years after the end of the war, Leitz introduced the Leica M3. It was such a step forward in thinking alongside precision manufacturing that most rival companies gave up trying to compete in the domain of rangefinder cameras (it was outrageously expensive, however, and not designed for the mass market). Meanwhile, Zeiss followed the outdated strategy of incremental camera upgrades from before the war, resulting in excessive complexity, impracticality, and extremely high prices. His inability to innovate paved the way for ruin. The world had changed. The war had been the catalyst for innovation, invention and modernization: the old ways had disappeared.

In postwar Japan, the United States established a significant presence to curb the expansion of Soviet influence in the Pacific. Steps were taken to ensure that the poor and despondent Japanese population did not turn to communism, addressing the growth of the economy. Close-knit groups were formed to establish cooperation between manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and banks, along with highly unionized blue-collar workers.

The intention of the Allied involvement in the recovery of the Japanese economy was not to contribute to the great technological advances, but to occupy and use a large and cheap labor force. Consequently, manufacturing was initially focused on manufacturing low-quality mass-produced items. “Made in Japan” was synonymous with “cheap garbage.” However, trade deals were established, particularly with the US, and once the West withdrew from Japan, some small camera companies such as Asahi, Canon, and Nikon were able to rebuild and grow in new directions.

Nikon paved the way for the Japanese camera industry in 1951, when Life Magazine photographers stopped in Japan on their way to cover the Korean War. They bought Nikon lenses for their Leica and Zeiss cameras and discovered the excellence of Japanese optics (which was based on German Zeiss lens designs). Nikon’s reputation in the US was made almost overnight.

There is great irony in the Nikon success story. One morning ten years earlier, two waves of Japanese warplanes had carried out a surprise attack on the US military base at Pearl Harbor (on the Hawaiian island of Pu’uloa). That assault secured America’s entry into World War II. Nikon (to use its modern name) was at the time a major supplier of optical equipment to the Japanese military, so it undoubtedly facilitated the deaths of many American soldiers.

Other camera manufacturers, who had started by copying Leitz and Zeiss models, also succeeded thanks to technical innovation and a changing perception of Japanese photographic products. In 1952, Asahi produced the first Japanese 35mm SLR (Asahiflex I). The 1954 Asahiflex IIB was the first SLR with a reliable instant-return mirror. The forgotten Tokiwa Seiki Firstflex 35, from the same year, was the first interchangeable lens, leaf shutter, 35mm SLR. The 1955 Miranda T was the first Japanese pentaprism with a 35mm DSLR camera at eye level. The 1957 Asahi Pentax was the first SLR with a quick-winding right-handed thumb lever, first fold-out film rewind crank, first microprism focusing aid and established the “modern” control design of the 35mm SLR. The list goes on and on until about 1960, when almost all of the former were Japanese and German innovations ceased.

The German giants this article begins with did not completely disappear. Zeiss made one last offer to return to center stage in 1973 when they teamed up with the Japanese company Yashica to produce the Contax RTS luxury camera. Leica entered the digital age with the great help of the Japanese electronics company Panasonic. Praktica, a casualty of the East German war, scored a couple of firsts before finally succumbing to extinction. In 1966, Praktica produced the first SLR with an electronically timed shutter, and then, in 1971, the first electromechanical lens diaphragm stop control.

I’m not a historian, so please don’t hit me with comments if I’m wrong about any detail or if I oversimplified the story. I wrote this article as a camera collector wondering why their pre-1960 cameras are all German and their post-1960 cameras are exclusively Japanese. The reason is not a story of product migration to less and less expensive manufacturing locations; it is a drift of intellectual advance from one nation to another, and it occurred in a relatively short period of time. Who knows when or where the next camera breakthrough will occur? I just hope it doesn’t take another war!