Tanaka was born in
Kurume,
Chikugo province (present-day
Fukuoka prefecture) as the eldest son of a
tortoise shell craftsman. Apprenticed at an early age, he was a gifted artisan. At the age of eight, he invented an inkstone case with a secret lock, which required a cord to be twisted in a certain manner to open it. At the age of 14, he had invented a loom capable of weaving intricate designs into fabric. From age 20 he began to make
karakuri puppet dolls, autonomous dolls powered by springs, pneumatics and hydraulics, capable of relatively complex movements, which were much in demand by the
aristocrats of
Kyoto,
daimyō in feudal domains, and by the
Shōgun's court in
Edo. At age 21, he was performing around the country at festivals with clockwork dolls he constructed himself. He declined to take over the family business, surrendering his position to his younger brother and devoted his full attention to
karakuri dolls. It is often said that the best masterpieces of his
karakuri are
Yumi-Hiki Doji (arrow-shooting boy) and
Moji-kaki doll (letter-writing doll). In his mid-thirties, however, he aspired to invent more practical products. In 1834, he relocated to
Osaka, where he experimented in
pneumatics,
hydraulics and forms of lighting based on
rapeseed oil, including a pocket candlestick and an oil lamp with an air-pressurized fuel pump which proved to be very popular. He then moved on to Kyoto, where he studied
rangaku, or western learning, and
astronomy. He invented a pneumatic fire pump, and in 1851, he built a
myriad year clock which is now designated as an
Important Cultural Property by the Japanese government. With the development of the
Sonnō jōi movement, the atmosphere in Kyoto became increasingly dangerous towards foreign influences and technology, and Tanaka was invited by
Sano Tsunetami to
Saga Domain in
Kyūshū, where he was welcomed by
Nabeshima Naomasa. While in Saga, Tanaka designed and built Japan's first domestically made
steam locomotive and steam warship. Although he had no previous experience in the field, he had access to a Dutch reference book and had watched the demonstration of a
steam engine by the
Russian diplomat
Yevfimy Putyatin during his visit to
Nagasaki in 1853. He later was a student at the
Nagasaki Naval Training Center. On its closure and the withdrawal of its Dutch advisors, Tanaka moved back to Saga and worked at the
Seirenkata, where he built models of steam warships (both with screws and with side-paddles), a steam locomotive and experimented with making a telegraph and a glass factory. He was involved in the construction of a
reverberatory furnace in Saga for the production of
Armstrong guns. In 1864, he returned to his native
Kurume Domain, where he assisted in the development of modern weaponry. In 1873, six years after the
Meiji Restoration, Tanaka, then age 74 and still energetic, was invited by the
Ministry of Industry to come to Tokyo to make telegraphs at the ministry's small factory. He relocated to the
Ginza district in 1875. He rented the second floor of a temple in what is now
Roppongi as a workshop that evolved into his first company—Tanaka Seisakusho (Tanaka Engineering Works), the first manufacturer of telegraph equipment in Japan. After his death in 1881, his son founded . The company changed its name after Tanaka's death to in 1904. After a merger in 1939 with Tokyo Denki it became Tokyo Shibaura Denki, more commonly known today as
Toshiba. == Gallery ==