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Masujiro Hashimoto returned to Tokyo in 1911 from government-sponsored study in the United States inspired by the bustle and commotion of Broadway to build the first commercially-viable Japanese automobile. Three years later his company introduced its first car, the 10-horscpower DAT, an acronym formed from the surnames of its initial investors: Den, Aoyama, and Takeuchi.
By the 1930s, the firm, now known as Nissan, released their first true massproduced vehicle. They dubbed the car the Datson, literally the "son of DAT." When critics pointed out that the name unintentionally mirrored the Japanese phrase "to lose money," the last syllable was changed to "sun." Hence the Datsun, which soon symbolized Japan's rapid industrial advance in the decade before World War II. "The Rising Sun as the...