[Obayashi] History — From Tokyo Station to Skytree and Expo 2025

Note: This article is a factual summary based on Obayashi Corporation’s published IR material (Investors’ Guide, June 2026 edition). It is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures are as of the publication of the source material. Investment decisions are your own responsibility.

Obayashi Corporation’s Investors’ Guide 2026 traces the group’s history as a single timeline running from its 1892 founding in Osaka to FY2025 net sales of ¥2,586.2bn. Rather than list financial results year by year, the guide picks out roughly twenty milestones — landmark structures, corporate firsts, and organizational moves — and lets them tell the story. Taken together, the choices say almost as much about how the company sees itself as a builder as the dates do: a centuries-old Osaka castle tower, a Tokyo Bay crossing, the Tokyo Skytree®, and the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo all make the cut.

Founding and the prewar years (1892-1930s)

Year	Milestone
1892	Founded in Osaka as the Obayashi Store, by Yoshigoro Obayashi
1904	Renamed Obayashi Corporation
1905	Built the Port of Osaka
1914	Built Tokyo Central Station (now Tokyo Station)
1918	Incorporated as Obayashi Corporation, a stock company
1931	Rebuilt the Main Tower of Osaka Castle
1935	Published Guidelines for On-Site Employees, stipulating the Obayashi Three Pledges

The 1935 Three Pledges are not just a historical footnote. The guide still uses them as the foundation of the company’s stated philosophy today, more than ninety years later — see Strengths. Notably, the pledges were codified only after the company had already built two of the era’s most recognizable Osaka landmarks (the port and the castle tower) and Tokyo’s original central station, suggesting the guide sees the philosophy as a formalization of practice already under way, rather than a starting point.

Postwar growth and the first steps overseas (1960s-1980s)

Year	Milestone
1960	Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
1964	Opened its first overseas representative office, in Bangkok, Thailand
1965	Established the Technology Research Institute
1970	Established the Tokyo Head Office and entered the real estate development business
1972	Established its first overseas local subsidiary, PT Jaya Obayashi
1979	Became the first Japanese construction company to win an order for a public civil engineering project in the continental United States
1982	Built a sewer system in San Francisco

This is the period when Obayashi’s overseas network — covered in more detail on the Global Network page — first took shape, moving from a representative office (1964) to a local subsidiary (1972) to public-sector contracting in the United States (1979) within fifteen years. The same 1970 entry also marks the start of two businesses that are now reported as distinct segments in their own right: the Tokyo Head Office move and the entry into real estate development both point toward a group that was starting to organize itself as more than a single-line domestic contractor.

1991 to today: a century, and a new set of businesses

Year	Milestone
1991	Marked its 100th anniversary
1997	Completed the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line
1999	Launched full-scale expansion of its PFI (Private Finance Initiative) business — the forerunner of today’s green energy business
2010	Moved its registered head office location from Osaka to Tokyo
2012	Completed TOKYO SKYTREE® and started its renewable energy power generation business
2017	Established an R&D base in Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley Ventures & Laboratory)
2019	Formulated Obayashi Sustainability Vision 2050
2025	Built the Grand Ring for the 2025 Expo Osaka, Kansai

Two threads from this last stretch run through the rest of the guide. The 1999 PFI (Private Finance Initiative — a model for privately financing and operating public infrastructure) business is explicitly identified as the root of today’s green energy business, and the 2017 Silicon Valley R&D base sits alongside the exploratory work now organized under New Business Domains. Both show the same pattern as the 1970 real estate entry: a small, early move that only later gets reported as a full segment.

The area chart running beneath the timeline in the guide tracks net sales across the whole 130-plus-year span, and it is not a smooth line — it climbs and dips repeatedly through the more recent decades before reaching its FY2025 peak. The 2025 milestone doubles as a bookend for that chart: net sales for the fiscal year in which the Grand Ring was built reached the ¥2,586.2bn shown in the group’s company overview, the highest point the chart shows.

Why the guide tells it this way

None of these milestones is presented as a financial result — they are structures, corporate firsts, and organizational moves. Read together, though, they map onto the company’s current shape. The early decades establish the domestic construction and civil engineering base; the 1960s-80s section marks the start of the overseas business; and the 1990s-onward section marks the beginning of real estate development, green energy, and new business exploration as distinct lines — the same five business areas used to break down revenue and profit throughout the rest of the guide.

This article is part of our complete breakdown of the Obayashi Investors’ Guide 2026. See the hub article for the full series.

Note: This article is a factual summary based on Obayashi Corporation’s published IR material (Investors’ Guide, June 2026 edition). It is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures are as of the publication of the source material. Investment decisions are your own responsibility.