Beauty Brand History

Beauty was a Japanese brand that was founded circa 1946 as Taiyodo, a camera distributor in Tokyo, Japan. In 1948, the company branched out into camera manufacturing and established itself as Taiyōdō Kōki K.K. (太陽堂光機㈱). The company started off making subminiatures but soon began producing a series of twin lens reflex cameras, folding cameras, and medium format SLRs before expanding into fixed lens rangefinders like the Super L during the mid ’50s.

The company went bankrupt and emerged restructured as Beauty Camera K.K. (ビューティカメラ㈱) in 1957 and continued camera production until the early 1960s. Sometime after 1963, the company went under and faded from existence. Not much is known about the circumstances surrounding its failure but given its declaration of bankruptcy just a few years earlier, it’s probably safe to say that it wasn’t entirely surprising.