Kyota Sugimoto

He completed his studies at the Training Institute for Communication Technology in Osaka in 1900.

Sugimoto studied the frequency of use of kanji characters, and selected 2,400 of them for a typewriter.

The typebar then struck the character against the paper, and returned it to the grid.

The paper was held against a platen, similar to existing typewriters.

[1] On April 18, 1985, the Japan Patent Office selected him as one of Ten Japanese Great Inventors.