J. Winckler may well be regarded as the originator of the button industry in Japan. Being a technical man, he starts to operate a small mother-of-pearl button factory at the beginning of the nineties, out of which the entire Japanese button industry evolved, together with a German expert, Mr. Wernstedt from Ölsnitz in Vogtland, whom he brought over from Germany, together with specialized machines. Wernstedt later marries a Japanese and continues to live in Kobe, even after his retirement.

As late as 1936, the export of mother-of-pearl buttons ranked among the most important export items shipped from Kobe Port. In Winckler's Kobe warehouse, dozens of girls were reportedly exclusively occupied with sorting out these buttons according to size and sewing them onto cardboard for export. In the course of time, thousands of tons of Trokas shells were imported to Japan from Indonesia for this purpose and later on, hundreds of Japanese firms were busy exporting mother-of-pearl buttons from Japan.

Let us go back to the earlier history. In 1895 J. Winckler returns to Germany, where in the same year he establishes yet another branch. J. Winckler is now 44 years old.

The company in Japan is henceforth managed by the 38-year-old Danckwerts, who was successfully in charge of the company, later on from Hamburg, until his death at the age of 72, on March 25, 1929, while on a business trip to Frankfurt. Danckwerts was regarded until his death as a "very strict and greatly feared Winckler boss". Helmuth Danckwerts, one of his sons, had been working for some time in the thirties in the Kobe office, and a nephew of Danckwerts is the well-known travel writer Klaus Mehnert ("A German in the World"), who also paid a short visit to Winckler in Kobe during his trip to Japan in 1929. A little later, we will get to know another relative, G. Selig sr., who is to play an important part in the company's affairs.

When J. Winckler returned to Germany in 1895, he dispatched to Japan an acquaintance of his, F. Gensen, who was 20 years old at the time, as reinforcement. The latter was made authorized signatory in 1905 and a partner in 1910, and will be in charge of the company in Japan after Danckwerts goes to Hamburg, until finally he also returns to Germany in order to take over the management of the Hamburg office following Danckwerts' death.

The Hamburg office was thus playing an important role, right from the beginning. It was registered in 1895 by J. Winckler as an independent company, initially under the name J. Winckler, as "Winckler & Co." was already used elsewhere. Later on, when this company ceased to exist, it will revert once again to Winckler & Co. Until 1945 it was considered more or less to be an agent of the company in Japan, but in the course of its history, the Hamburg office time and again decisively contributed to the preservation of the Winckler company in Japan.

The environment in Japan has greatly changed since the founding of the company. While in the early days Japanese men were seen going about with topknots, sedan chairs and rikshas were used for locomotion and goods were transported by wheelbarrows and horsedrawn vehicles, Japan is becoming visibly modernized. By December 16, 1890, Winckler could be reached by telephone under telephone number 28. There were altogether 31 subscribers in Yokohama at that time. The main office is at this time located at 256 Yamashita-cho, Naka-ru, Yokohama, where it will remain for more than 100 years.

The expansion of business in those days, especially to South and Central America, is evidenced by two dictionaries, still in the company's possession, Webster's Dictionary of 1889 and a Spanish-German/German-Spanish dictionary from 1891.

The following years see the continuous addition of more lines, which the firm developed and promoted on its own, such as straw plaiting and lacquerware - for which they set up their own factories - as well as peppermint, menthol, porcelain, Japan wax and bamboo. Later on, hides and skins from northern Japan, Sachalin and Siberia were added and became important commodities.

Finally, large business deals were transacted in peppermint oil, menthol and skins, but which were only made possible by long-term prefinancing of suppliers and manufacturers and this prefinancing was going to play a major role for Winckler for many decades to come. Even today, the financing of import business is a not inconsiderable part of the functions of our firm.

Winckler & Co. keeps growing and on January 1, 1900 it is possible to look forward to the new century with good cheer, with 15 years of successful development work done by J. Winckler, Danckwerts and Gensen to show for it.

A letter from G. Selig sr. to his parents in Germany provides an insight into these times. G. Selig sr., the aforementioned relative of Danckwerts, joined the company through the latter's help. He came well prepared for his job in Japan, because before the time of his arrival in Japan in 1898 at the age of 23, he had studied in Berlin at the "Institute of Oriental Languages" (which is now attached to the University of Bonn), primarily Japanese, which was actually quite unusual then. He was soon to become a partner and his son G. Selig jr. will be reorganizing the company in Japan after the Second World War and his grandchildren will be guiding it to the 21st Century.

The letter dates from August 22, 1900. It gives an account about the climbing of Mount Fuji and describes things that are long forgotten and still the same:

One rides in a riksha to Yokohama station, boards a crowded train, where there is only standing room. It is better to let a Japanese companion pay, because "if we foreigners had been by ourselves, the fare would surely have been higher and we would have had to put up with a lot of other unpleasantness." From Gotemba (railway) station one rides a horse towards Mount Fuji. G. Selig's horse was led by a female guide. "My guide was beautiful, that is from behind, and when she turned around and smiled at me seductively with her black mouth that looked like the entrance to hell, it gave me the creeps. You see, married women in Japan paint the inside of their mouths black, including tongue and teeth." The first night was spent at the second mountain station. "This shelter was a cave, dug into the side of the mountain, which gets completely snowed in during the winter. It was fairly large, but so low that I could only walk in it by stooping." Late at night the hired porters started to play cards, "because here at the top they could indulge in the forbidden game without punishment, since the eye of the law does extend as far as this." -- Each of us had to pay 1 yen = 2.10 marks for this fine lodging."
The second night was spent at the eighth mountain station and so it went on. "After I climbed for about 100 steps, I had to rest for 5 minutes." The third night was then spent dead tired near the peak, but "unfortunately, we overslept and missed the sunrise that was said to be very beautiful, a missed opportunity which I still regret to this day."
The descent comes next. "One can make headway only very slowly, because the place in front of us and behind us was crawling and teeming with Japanese and I would guess that about 500 people turned up that morning." Finally, they returned again to the second mountain station. "This shelter was rented for the following night for a princess from Tokyo and her entourage; the poor girl had committed a sin and as penance she has to pray high up there. Thereafter she is supposed to marry a prince."
At Gotamba the mountaineers boarded a first class carriage, "so as to be able to rest comfortably and to freshen up again." By coincidence, the Minister of the Interior was travelling in the same compartment. When we had to change trains one station before Yokohama, the minister "handed to us through the window several fans that had been given to us by a teahouse as a gift and that we left behind as we did not want to drag them along with us any more." The letter concludes with the remark "The whole things often feels like a dream and then I think that it was too good to be true."

In the meantime connections have been set up in Central and South America, the USA, Germany and the rest of Europe. A branch was opened in 1907 in Qingdao (China), which dealt with imports and exports, especially of peanuts.

The import from Germany into Japan at the time after the Russo-Japanese war (1904 - 1905) included mainly German textbooks of medicine, philosophy and technology from the firm F.A. Brockhaus in Leipzig, whose agent in Japan was Winckler. An important role was also played by the import of mercury from Spain, graphite from Ceylon and chemicals from Germany. But import was not an essential field of activity for Winckler, export played the dominant role and everything else was subordinated to it.

The company was transformed on February 5, 1912 into a limited partnership (goshi kaisha), after the death in Germany the previous year of the founder, Jakob Winckler, at the age of 61.
The limited partners mentioned are Mrs. Hedwig Winckler, his widow, F. Danckwerts, who had moved to Hamburg, F. Gensen, who took over from Danckwerts as manager in Yokohama, G. Selig sr., as well as J. Westphalen, currently in Japan, with whom J. Winckler had probably established the Hamburg branch, and F. Fachtmann, the later manager in Yokohama.

An office was also opened in Nagoya in that year, headed by a Mr. K. Voss, who may well have been the first German businessman in Nagoya. Porcelain was exported from there, as well as straw plaiting which was processed in Europe and the USA into men's straw hats that were popularly worn during the summer at that time. Thus, Winckler was now represented in Yokohama, Nagoya and Kobe, a tradition that has been kept up until the present time. In addition, in 1912 there was also the Hamburg branch established by J. Winckler, which was then operated by Danckwerts after J. Winckler's death and the branch in Qingdao was being set up, where the German Mr. P. Kutt was in charge.

When the day's work was done, one customarily proceeded to the German club "Club Germania", which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1913. There one could do bowling, play pool or celebrate Bismarck's birthday with an excursion to Tomioka.

The steady expansion of the firm was suddenly halted in 1914 by the First World War, and as member of an "enemy nation", Winckler had no choice but to close down the offices and to dismiss the employees. Some of the German men were drafted to Qingdao for the defense of the German colony.

The offices in Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya were forcibly sold and the proceeds were seized by the Japanese. The barely completed new offices and warehouse complex in Qingdao fell as spoils of war to the Japanese -- the warehouse was requisitioned by the German army for use as a stable for horses -- and only the office in Hamburg was left. Thus the firm Winckler & Co. was forced to end its activity in Japan after about 30 years.