In July 2005, a painless injection needle went on sale to hospitals in Japan. In 2000, the medical equipment maker Terumo had brought the drawing of a needle that is thick at the base and thinner toward the tip to Okano Kōgyō, a company known for its metal-pressing technology. The tip of the needle, the Nanopass 33, is 0.20 millimeters wide.
The company’s president, Okano Masayuki, was born in Sumida in 1933. The business weekly Tōyō Keizai writes that it takes at least 20 years to become a craftsman of fukashibori, deep drawing, which shapes a flat sheet of metal into a box or a tube through many steps.