I bet many of you didn't know that canon was a japanese company! Canon Inc.(Kiyanon Kabushiki-gaisha?) (TYO: 7751 , NYSE: CAJ) is a Japanese company that specializes in imaging and optical products, including cameras, photocopiers and computer printers. *The headquarters are in Tokyo.* Wikipedia

Re: "Source? How do I know it is correct" Comment and rating are harrassment. Grow up. Complaints have been made to Answerbag admin concerning this rating. ------------------------------------------------------------ Canon is headquartered in Japan and consists of about a dozen business divisions, including Canon Supercomputing and Canon Software. Diversification is the norm among large Japanese firms. Canon Marketing Japan is located at: CANON S TOWER 16-6 Konan 2-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8011, Japan A brief synopsis of the start of Canon from photoethnography.com, who have written as good a summary as anyone else ... "Canon started out its life as Seiki Kohgaku Kenkyuujo (Precision Optical Research Company). Its first goal was to produce domestic inexpensive Leica clones, and it released the Kwanon, its first camera in 1934. Interestingly, they used Nikon lenses since Nikon was already established as an optical lens manufacturer and was not making any of its own camera bodies at that time. Canon soon gained the ability to make their own lenses and never looked back. Nikon also went on to produce some reasonably popular cameras of its own as well. The name 'Canon' comes from the Buddhist deity Kwanon and early Canon cameras were actually spelled 'Kwanon' and the lenses were named 'Kyasapa' after another deity." (Did every camera company from 1930 on start out by building clones of the early Leica 35mm rangefinders? No, only the ones that didn't clone cameras from Zeiss and Rollei. My Russian-made Zorki and FED cameras are probably the cheapest Leica clones out there, comrade.)