Stratocasters made in Japan

Fender Japan

In the early '80s a new problem that Fender had to deal with emerged: the rise of the made in Japan guitars, caused by dollar increase against yen and by the quality of the instruments realized in Japan, which made those Americans uncompetitive. These guitars very often literally copied Stratocasters and at the same time they cost less. Since it was difficult to protect Fender design from foreign competition, in 1982 Bill Schultz and Roger Balmer (Fender’s then head of marketing and sales) decided to produce authentic Fender Stratocasters in Japan, in order to compete with the non-original copies. “Not only did we have to get the image of Fender back up again, and get the quality standard built up to make that happen, but we had to stop this plethora of [Japanese] copies,” Dan Smith said. “A lot of arrogant companies, like Tokai, a lot of these companies basically told Bill Schultz and I that they were gonna bury us, that they were gonna be Fender, that whether we liked it or not they were gonna take over the marketplace”.
After a meeting with Mr. Kojima from Kanda Shokai and Mike Yamano from Yamano Music, the Fender Japan co. Ltd. was officially announced at the Grand Palace Hotel, Kudanshita, Tokyo, on 11 March 1982. The design and components of the Stratocasters would be pertinent to Fender/CBS and the distribution on the Japanese market would be managed by Kanda Shokai only, while Yamano Music, which invested money in Fender Japan, would deal with the importation into Japan of the instruments produced in the U.S.A.. Kanda Shokai suggested Tokai as one possible factory, but the leaders of Fender USA hated Tokai, they did not trust them at all. So the guitars would be realized by FujiGen Gakki, in Matsumoto, about 200 km north of Tokyo, which was known for its production of the Ibanez and Antoria, and because it manufactured the Greco for Kanda.
The birth of Fender Japan was a huge success for the FMIC. It was a blow to all copies made in Japan. Also Tokai, which produced excellent replicas of the Fenders, suffered from the new MIJ guitars, as Paul Colbert, the first journalist to review the new instruments, reported: “Tokai are as detailed in their replicas but, psychological or not, having that Fender logo at the top of the headstock puts heritage in your hands, even if given an Eastern interpretation”.
The first advertisement of the guitars made in Japan recited: "An international team of guitar designers and craftsman gave these new Squier guitars the same light touch and brilliant tone that made the originals the world's most sought-after electric guitars"; no mention of where the guitars were built was given. This led many people to think that American workers didn’t take the news well due to old dislikes that went back to the Second World War. But at the Fullerton factory there was no racial hate towards Japanese. Almost 80 percent of the 1000 workers were Latino, not white, and they had absolutely no racial problems with Japanese. There were, of course, some people who thought the Japanese project would make them lose their jobs, but it wasn’t racial hatred.

The principals present at the the press conference at the Grand Palace Hotel were Schultz, Smith and Balmer from Fender; Chiroshi Kojima, president of Kanda; and Masamitsu Yamano, president of Yamano Music (courtesy of 21.frets.com)

Makoto Nick Sugimoto

In the second half of '80s Makoto "Nick" Sugimoto established a small Custom Edition Team, a sort of Japanese Custom Shop. He is a luthier who had worked for twenty-three years in R&D, custom guitar building and engineering at Fujigen factory, and that in 2002 started manufacturing guitars and basses with his uncle as the original brand Sugi Guitars. The team consisted of highly skilled craftsmen; they studied and analyzed Fender guitars and basses a lot, had active relations with Fender USA, used only selected materials and took special orders from guitarists and bassists.

Dan Smith, Makoto Nick Sugimoto and Michael Stevens with Fujigen’s R&D employees in 1988 (Courtesy of M. N. Sugimoto)

The Dyna Gakki (Courtesy of Ikebe)

From the second half of the 1990s Fender began gradually shifting Japanese production from Fujigen, which produced Fender until 1997, to Dyna Gakki, former Greco’s manufacturer, and this would explain the modification of the "Made in Japan" decal to "Crafted in Japan", typical of the new factories and which remained on Japanese guitars for a few years. At first Dyna couldn’t immediately make 5000 instruments a month like Fujigen, so Fender USA agreed to let Tokai make a very limited number of instruments, only for sale in Japan. As soon as Dyna could match Fujigen monthly quantity, Tokai stopped all work with Fender Japan. So Tokai was only involved for a few months.
Over the years there had been a gradual decline in Fender Japan's standing. Japan's guitar market had changed and Japanese were no longer immune to the demand for guitars priced below those that their own country's factories could produce. This all coincided with Fender developing the capabilities of its own factories in the USA and Mexico, which allowed it to make a wider range of instruments priced equal to the made in Japan instruments.
So FMIC made many changes to the original 1982 Fender-Japan agreement and other joint-ventures, as K.K. Fender Promotion (2000) and Dyna Boeky (2005) were born. Kanda Shokai and Yamano remained Fender's Japanese distributors, each handling different sections of the product range, as mentioned in a Fender's prospectus from their abandoned IPO filed on March 8, 2012: “Following the termination of a joint venture in Japan with two of our greater than 5% stockholders and their affiliates, Kanda Shokai Co., Ltd. and Yamano Music Co., Ltd., we entered into distribution agreements with each of these entities”.
New agreements with these distributors would terminate on December 31, 2012, but they would be renewed automatically for successive three-year terms “if Kanda Shokai meets certain minimum purchase thresholds” and “unless either we [FMIC] or Yamano fails to comply with certain specified conditions”. But conditions weren’t met and, on April 1, 2015, Fender took direct control of the distribution of the instruments manufactured in Japan and, at the same time, the Made in Japan Exclusive Series was presented.
In 2017 the master builder Chris Fleming was invited in Japan to monitor the production of the new Made in Japan Traditional Series born on September 13, 2017 to commemorate the thirty-five years of Fender Japan.
If we review the whole made in Japan era, we can note some highs and lows in production: guitars known for the quality of the woods used and were so well built as to become myth and legend for some (but too overvalued for others) were joined by others whose components were low-budget. Certainly the guitars made in Japan had supported Fender in the first difficult years of post CBS, when the American factory wasn’t still able to meet the needs of the world market, but what has happened next? Is it possible that the opening of the Ensenada factory, so close to Corona, had led Fender to believe less in the MIJ, since they were in the same price range as the Mexican guitars?

Antonio Calvosa
Very special thanks to Scott Zimmerman

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