Japanese Rockets
Japan has now three rockets in use.
H2A: On-board capability 10 tons; Entire length 53 meters; Fuel liquid and solid; Costs $100 million; Developed in 2001.
H2B: On-board capability 16.5 tons; Entire length 57 meters; Fuel liquid and solid; Costs $150 million; Developed in 2009.
Epsilon Launch Vehicle: On-board capability 1.2 tons; Entire length 24 meters; Fuel solid; Costs $38 million; Developed in 2013.
Japan restarted its development of rockets after WWII in 1954, allocating an yearly budget of 5.6 million yen.
The man in charge of this development was Hideo Itokawa, a former designer of fighter planes of the Imperial Army of Japan during WWII. However, as he came to have some conflicts with the Army which pushed too much unreasonable demand on engineer Itokawa, he quit a job in a maker of air planes to work in the University of Tokyo as assistant professor.
After WWII, he started study on rockets, though most people concerned in the University and businesses were indifferent to rockets. Professor Itokawa had to persuade them to cooperate with him in pursuing his plan to develop Japanese rockets.
In 1955, he tested his first rocket called Pencil Rocket whose length was just 23 cm (9 inches).
He later said that he wanted to start with a small thing and advance to a big one while the US and the Soviet Union were experimenting big ones and then modifying them to practically small ones. So, in the 23 cm body Itokawa installed all the necessary basic components for a rocket.
Total 29 pencil rockets were launched, though horizontally, from a launch pad 1.5 meters high from the ground in facilities in Tokyo. In the course of flying a rocket he set paper walls, each of which was vertically placed at some interval. By measuring time and an angle a rocket broke each paper wall, he could check performance of the pencil rocket.
So, Japanese rockets are not copies of America rockets. Japan developed its own version of rockets after WWII by its own efforts from scratch.
http://www.tel.co.jp/museum/magazine/spacedev/130422_topics_05/
In 1970, the first Japanese artificial satellite, named O-sumi, was launched with a Lamda rocket, though Itokawa left the forefront of Japan's rocket development community in 1967
This Lamda rocket was 16.5 meters long with a weight of 9.4 tons. Its payload was 26 kg. This success of launching the O-sumi satellite made Japan the fourth country in the world that could launch a satellite by its own ability.
http://www5.kiwi-us.com/~jk1exf/oosumi-1.html
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