Ajinomoto MSG Factory

The origins of Ajinomoto go back to the late 1800s, their Kawasaki factory established in 1914 when they were known as S. Suzuki & Co. Ltd. 9 years later, the company and its factory got smacked hard, along with most of the region around Tokyo, by the Great Kantō Earthquake. Not wasting much time, they rebuilt into a food and chemical giant, starting with their early seaweed-based seasoning, adding soy sauce in the 1930s, pharmaceutical amino acids, and by the 1960s, creating and packaging Ajinomoto, and have since sold millions and millions of panda bottles filled with MSG.