Eiichi Narishige established the Narishige Scientific Instrument Laboratory in Tokyo in 1953. Quickly becoming renowned throughout Japan for producing high-quality mechanical micromanipulators and stereotaxic equipment, Narishige concentrated on selling to physiology and neuroscience research facilities in Japan and, later, the West. The first hydraulic micromanipulator, a single-axis device designed to place microelectrodes into the brains of experimental animals, followed in 1969, and the first three-axis hydraulic micromanipulator was produced in the early 1980s (Cohen et al., 1992). The advent of three hydraulic axes controlled by a single joystick allowed true microsurgical manipulation in much the same way that the original Leitz and DeFonbrune joystick models had. The main advantage of the Narishige system over the traditional Leitz manipulator was the ability to mount the moving (slave) headstage on to the microscope, but with the joystick controller positioned remotely.

In 1985, Narishige Company Limited was established, also in Tokyo, as a separate entity from Narishige Scientific. Unlike Narishige Scientific, which sold instruments directly to end users, Narishige Company distributed through the big four microscope companies, Leica, Zeiss, Olympus and Nikon. With the power of the big four's sales teams behind it, sales of Narishige equipment began to increase steadily. New markets were identified, including SUZI and animal ICSI around 1987. One of the first establishments to develop this technique, the Dutch-Speaking Free University of Brussels (AZ-VUB), was already a customer of the Nikon Corporation.