Who Made The Parts?

Given the already established business relationship between C.F. Martin & Co and Tokai Gakki, it would seem logical for Tokai to be the source of the unfinished bodies and necks that were shipped from Japan to the USA, but in the world of Japanese business relationships things are never that simple. Best to start off with the known facts.

The end of WW2 brought much hardship to the average Japanese citizen. Major cities had been heavily bombed, food was scarce. Foreign troops exerted control over almost every aspect of Japanese life, from a US Army 5-Star General running the national government to US Military Police patrolling the streets. The national economy had entirely collapsed in 1945, but a few years later there had been enough improvement in living conditions that the average Japanese citizen might have a few ¥ to spend on things beyond basic survival. The occupying troops had brought Western-style guitars with them and as the years went by the instrument became popular in Japanese society. Enterprising locals started making guitars to suit the newly emerging market and companies like Tokai Gakki were the result

1947 ——- Hamamatsu, Japan

It didn’t take long for Tokai to outgrow that original wood-frame building.

In 1972 an agreement was signed that left Tokai the sole distributor for Martin guitars in Japan. A year later, the company was sending representatives to Nazareth as part of “importing and forming a technical alliance”. A few years later, in 1975, Tokai started marketing the Cat’s Eye brand of acoustics in the Japanese domestic market - an entire range made up of Martin clones. That much is fairly well documented. From here on the story gets a lot more murky, largely due to the nature of the Japanese guitar industry at the time. During the 1980’s and 90’s the only really big musical instrument manufacturer in Japan was Yamaha. One level down from that lofty peak, the landscape was covered with hundreds of smaller businesses that contracted and sub-contracted, maybe even sub-sub-contracted, in order to keep their employees busy and the cash flow moving in the right direction

To date, the author of this website has not come across a single reference that positively states that the sub-assemblies shipped by Tokai to Martin were actually made by Tokai in their own factory. Indeed, there is some admittedly thin evidence that there was another arrangement entirely. The following quotes come from a Japanese seller who certainly sounds authoritative

“ The Shenandoah brand has two major histories:

1 - The Shenandoah series, which was produced from 1983 to 1993 (only for 10 years), was a model in which wood was imported from Japan and assembled at Martin Corporation in the United States.

2 - The Shenandoah by Martin brand from 1994 onward was produced by Kurosawa Musical Instruments (Martin's distributor in Japan at the time) under license from Martin, and by Terada Musical Instruments, for example the so-called Fender Japan. If released in Japan, it would be worthy of the name "Martin Japan" in the same sense, and it is a complete replica model of a vintage Martin made in Japan, setting it apart from the Shenandoah series up to 1993.”

Note how the source for the MIJ Shenandoahs (Type 2 on this website) is very carefully noted as Kurosawa and Terada, while the info for the Type 1 guitars gives no detail besides “wood”. Tokai already had an established factory during the period the Type 1 Shenandoah parts were being made, and indeed they were expanding their production capacity at the time. How much of that capacity was devoted to the Cat’s Eye guitars and how much was Shenandoah production is currently unknown. My files contain two other references that confirm this Terada/Kurosawa connection after 1994: a message board thread running on a Japanese guitar forum between 2002 and 2016, and a Shenandoah sale listing by Ishibashi Music, a major retailer of musical instruments in Japan. FWIW I’ve done business with Ishibashi as a customer and have found their attention to detail impressive, to say the least. Consequently, I’m strongly inclined to take their word on this point

As of this writing, the source of the pre-1993 sub-assemblies simply can’t be conclusively determined. The working theory is that Tokai started out making the body and neck sub-assemblies themselves, but by 1991 had sub-contracted the body and neck sub-assemblies to Terada, with Terada simply changing over to full production of finished guitars in time for the 1994 season. The strongest single piece of evidence for this is based on a particularly uncommon set of features that overlapped the transition between 50/50 hybrid manufacture and 100% Made In Japan

OMC-2832 —— Hybrid production dated to 1991 SMC-28 ——- Made In Japan ca. 1993-1994

The rare body outline is identical and so is the equally rare oval soundhole. This last feature was never common in the regular Martin lineup either. Martin had never made a cutaway version of anything before 1981 and all of those early cutaways had modified top bracing that forced the adoption of the oval soundhole. A limited run of 76 examples of model OMC-28 was produced in 1990 and this particular run seems to have been the pattern for the Shenandoah variations on the theme which came out in 1991. As far as Shenandoahs are concerned, the oval soundhole showed up on only one other model: the HJ-1832, also dating to 1991 and of which there is only a single known example