VERY RARE VINTAGE 70s Hitachi TOUCH SENSITIVE Traction Elevator at Saikaya Fujisawa, Fujisawa, Japan

Описание: Filmed on July 7th, 2025 with ‪@PNWElevatorAviation‬

Happy Birthday to ‪@DieselDucy‬ once again! Since today is Andrew's 48th Birthday, I will once again continue my tradition of uploading a video of an elevator that is as old as him!
Unfortunately, I do not have any elevators that are from 1977 in my backlog as of right now, but this elevator is from 1978, so it's close enough!
And the elevator we are celebrating Andrew's birthday with is an AMAZING & VERY RARE Hitachi Elevator at a Department Store just a 45 minute train ride away from Tokyo with TOUCH SENSITIVE Buttons! This my VERY FIRST Vintage Elevator upload from Japan, and this is also my VERY FIRST Vintage Elevator installed before the 1980s that features Touch Sensitive buttons that is NOT an Otis! The buttons are LITERALLY just like Otis Touch but this is a Hitachi!
From what I can gather online, this model used to be very common in High Rise Buildings & Department Stores in Japan and other parts of Asia that were built from the Mid 1960s up until the Early 1980s essentially making these the Otis Autotronic & VIP-260 of Asia. Unfortunately though, as you would expect, the vast majority have now been modernized. There were 3 other buildings that I had on my list of places to see in Japan (those being the Shinjuku Sumitomo Building, the Tokyo Women's University Hospital & The Melsa Department Store in Nagoya) that had these fixtures up until recently, but unfortunately they've all been modernized (for the case of the hospital, we literally JUST missed them as they were modding the last car there). Aside from these, the only known survivors in Japan are 2 places in Sapporo, and beyond that there's one in the Phillipines and a couple in Hong Kong. Aside from that however, these are to my knowledge extinct GLOBALLY making this a VERY RARE find! Even for the case of this store, the Main Bank of Glass Elevators here were modernized, however, this Standalone Internal Elevator (it appears they were originally gonna install 2 cars here) remains FULLY ORIGINAL with it's VERY RARE Hitachi Touch Buttons (I'm pretty sure these use Vacuum Tubes too similar to Otis Touch), and HOPEFULLY this store is able to keep this thing original for years to come! They've literally done an AMAZING Job Maintaining this elevator, ALL of the indicator lights work, it travels SO SMOOTHLY you BARELY feel it move, it's QUICK for the amount of floors, the fixtures are in MINT CONDITION & overall this elevator literally runs and looks like it was installed yesterday! This thing also has VERY NICE Classic Leveling too similar to Otis Elevators from the same era, as well as BEAUTIFUL DOORBELL Chimes that are absolute MUSIC to my ears!
I HOPE & PRAY this elevator stays original for a long while given it's rarity, antiqueness & character and the fact that it looks very modern for its age and runs so well, however, I also need to be realistic and expect the worst....With that in mind, if you are visiting Tokyo, I would DEFINITELY HIGHLY ADVISE taking the 45 minute trek from Tokyo Station to ride this thing while you can before it's too late! Just double check with the Japanese Elevator Channels and make sure there's a recent unmodded video of this before you come here as there were plenty of elevators ‪@FinnishLiftFilmer1993‬ filmed in Japan years ago that I can sadly confirm were modernized....


Installed in 1978.

Camera details:

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

Mic: Built in

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