Latest news with #Hoshino
Tokyo Reported
06-05-2025
- Tokyo Reported
Another suspected 'Luffy' member nabbed in Manila
PHILIPPINES (TR) – Authorities here have apprehended another male Japanese national who is suspected member of the so-called 'Luffy' fraud ring. The arrest of Takuya Hoshino, 23, is fourth made by authorities in the Manila this year, reports Nippon News Network (Apr. 23). On Wednesday, Philippine authorities apprehended Hoshino at a house in the capital. The Luffy group is named after the popular manga for boys. It specializes in tokushu sagi , which is a type of fraud carried out on the telephone by a caller impersonating an authority figure or a victim's relative. Takuya Hoshino Police had been searching for Hoshino after an arrest warrant was issued for him and accomplices. They are allegedly impersonated police officers, stole bank cash cards from elderly people and illegally withdrew more than 20 million yen in cash from accounts. Hoshino is believed to have committed specialized fraud from the Philippines to Japan under the direction of masterminds calling themselves Luffy. On January 20, authorities announced the apprehension of Yuhei Tsukuda, 28, in Pampanga province. He is also a suspected member of Luffy. Later that month, they arrested 43-year-old Takashi Sasaki, another suspected Luffy member. In February, authorities apprehended Eiji Shigematsu. Hoshino is expected to be deported to Japan at some point in the future.
Asahi Shimbun
23-04-2025
- Business
- Asahi Shimbun
Hoshino Resorts to open hotel in Oze under new ‘Lucy' brand
An exterior view of Lucy Ozehatomachi (Provided by Hoshino Resorts Inc.) Hoshino Resorts Inc. on April 22 announced the launch of a new brand called 'Lucy' after the famed English traveler Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904) to serve as bases for mountain tourism. The company, headquartered in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, said Gunma Prefecture will be home to the first Lucy hotel scheduled open in September at Hatomachi Pass in Katashina village. The pass is one of the main entrances to Oze National Park. Regarding the environmental protection of Oze, company President Yoshiharu Hoshino said that the new hotel will not impact nature because 'it does not have the capacity to do so.' Hoshino emphasized that the company has experience operating in areas where ecosystem protection is important, such as Iriomotejima island and Taketomijima island in Okinawa Prefecture. 'We will do what is necessary for the (Oze) region as we operate,' he said. The company plans to expand the brand to several mountain tourism destinations, including Tateyama in Toyama Prefecture. The new 25-room hotel, Lucy Ozehatomachi by Hoshino Resorts, is located on the site of the former Hatomachi Sanso mountain lodge and rest area, which used to be operated by Tokyo Power Technology. Reservations open on June 2. An accompanying facility, Hatomachi Base Cafe and Shop, is also going up alongside the hotel and is expected to open on Aug. 1. The hotel is equipped with private rooms, hot-water toilets and showers, and is meant to cater to 'entry-level climbers' who feel uneasy about staying overnight in mountain lodges, the company said. It went on to share that there will also be a 24-hour convenience store. 'Japan is good at cultural tourism, but not as good at nature tourism,' said Hoshino. In noting that there are 35 national parks in Japan, he said, 'If we create strong nature tourism content in these places, we can achieve regional diversification.' Hoshino added that strengthening nature tourism may also help with the overtourism problem. The company also announced its plans to open the 24th property under its "Kai" brand of hot spring inns in the Kusatsu Onsen resort area of Gunma Prefecture in spring 2026. The site of the 94-room facility is a hill overlooking Mount Kusatsu-Shirane. Another venture in Gunma is its running of what formerly was known as the Tanigawadake Ropeway service on the 1,977-meter high Mount Tanigawadake in Minakami since 2022. The company renamed the ropeway to Tanigawadake Joch, using the German word for the lowest point between two peaks, in 2024. This is part of its efforts to "rebrand the mountain" where it offers mountain climbing and other forms of tourism.
Asia Times
09-04-2025
- Automotive
- Asia Times
Troubled automaker Nissan has a new CEO – but can he do the job?
Nissan faces a difficult road ahead that includes questions about whether its new CEO, Ivan Espinosa, is up to the task of leading the troubled auto manufacturer and whether its largely non-automotive board of directors is remotely qualified to run a modern auto company. As things stand now, a week after the 46-year-old executive officially replaced Makoto Uchida, little is still known about Espinosa other than that he is Mexican-born, one of the youngest CEOs in Japanese auto industry history, the second-youngest foreigner, and worked in product planning for most of his career at Nissan including the last eight years in Japan. In a late-March interview with Automotive News, he came across as affable and bright, but added little to his resume. He drives a Z-car to work. He's married with two children, plays tennis and golf, but gave little indication about what his duties were as chief planning officer, a position he held between April 2024 and April 2025, or why Nissan's post-Carlos Ghosn restructuring plan, Nissan NEXT, failed so dramatically. When Uchida announced the plan in May 2000, he set fiscal 2023 targets of a 5% operating profit margin, a 6% global market share and 4.3 million in global sales. He also set a sales target of 1 million electric and electrified vehicles. One year after the plan ended, Nissan's operating profit margin through December had fallen to 0.5%. Global market share fell to below 4%. To put that in historicial context, in fiscal 2017, the final full year of Carlos Ghosn's tenure at Nissan, global market share stood at 6.2%. While Nissan succeeded in cutting production capacity by to 5.4 million units, it failed dramatically, by more than a million units, to achieve its sales target. Fiscal 2024 plant utilization was 60%, not 80% as promised. Veteran Tokyo analyst Koji Endo noted that in fiscal 2023, the final year of the Nissan NEXT program, only one of Nissan's 15 main plants was operating at 80% of utilization. It is not clear what role Espinosa played in the failed restructuring program — Ashwani Gupta, Nissan's former COO, served doubly as chief planning officer — but his titles since 2017 as a senior executive in Nissan's global product strategy and product planning division indicate that he would have been involved. As one former Nissan executive who's tracked Espinosa's career said: 'Whether he's been blocked by others in the organization is not clear. But it's clear that he didn't deliver.' Gupta would be caught up in a scandal reportedly involving a female employee and forced to resign in June 2023. Other key members of the restructuring team are being removed. Among them: Asako Hoshino, Kunio Nakaguro and Hideyuki Sakamoto. Hoshino was Nissan's chief brand and customer officer, a position she has held since April 2020. Nakaguro was chief technology officer and Sakamoto was chief monozukuri (roughly, manufacturing and supply chain) officer. Nakaguro and Sakamoto joined the executive committee with Hoshino in June 2019. Sakamoto was elevated in 2020 to the board, where he's been in charge of manufacturing and supply chain management. While the automaker didn't openly say that the trio was responsible for Nissan's marketplace failures, people who know them have been hyper-critical of their performance. Uchida and Sakamoto will formally leave the board at the automaker's June general shareholders meeting on June 20 to be replaced by Espinosa and some still-to-be-disclosed others. It is still not clear who might replace Sakamoto on Nissan's board. The speculation is that at least one of those tabbed to fill a board vacancy is Guillaume Cartier, Nissan's newly named chief performance officer. Others, given Nissan's weak performance globally, will be more difficult to choose. Carlos Ghosn. Photo: ABC News For fiscal 2018, the year Carlos Ghosn was removed from management and imprisoned in November, Nissan's global market share was 6.0% on yearly sales of 5.5 million units. Sales have since fallen to 3.2 million and market share to less than 4% with the US, China and Europe all experiencing huge losses both in volumes and share. 'They've had five to six years to fix the problem,' said Chris Richter, managing director in Tokyo at CLSA. 'They can't say that the problems today are the fault of Carlos Ghosn. Too much time has passed.' Meanwhile, the three largest credit rating agencies — Fitch, Moody's and S&P Global — have downgraded Nissan's credit rating to junk status. On March 7, S&P Global Ratings lowered its long-term credit rating on Nissan to 'BB', below every major automaker outside China including Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi Motors Hyundai, Kia, General Motors, Ford, Stellantis, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Renault. Toyota received an A+ rating, Honda, Hyundai and Kia A-, Mitsubishi Motors and Renault BB+. 'Prospects for a fast improvement in Nissan's automotive business are now remote,' reported S&P Global. 'The negative outlook reflects our view that the company's credit worthiness may continue to deteriorate as a challenging operating environment hampers profitability improvement and free cash flow losses continue. 'We expect it will take about two years before Nissan can reap the full cost-savings from restructuring. The 400 billion yen cost reduction measures will be implemented from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2026. Some plant closures and job cuts will be implemented in fiscal 2026.' S&P Global expects the competitive environment to remain challenging, costs from inflation to rise. It foresees pressure on profitability as EV sales increase. 'Even if cost reduction efforts are implemented as planned, we do not see the company's EBITDA margin reaching 6% in the next one to two years.' The forecast did not include the impact of US tariffs on Nissan's Mexican holdings, where the automaker operates two vehicle plants and a large transmission plant. It did factor in more than $5 billion in debt due in 2026. Could Honda still be a partner? Not likely, according to our sources. Although talks between the two automakers were widely reported in December, there was never a realistic way to make a merger work without Nissan closing plants and production lines. There is too much duplication in their model lineups. There is also too great a gap between the their management groups' makeups, with Nissan having had only two auto executives on its 12-member board. Honda has six, who average 37 years working for Honda. One of Honda's outside directors is a former public prosecutor. They might be able to team up in electric cars, where both are lagging behind industry competitors. Or there might be small projects such as joint truck production in Mississippi and Alabama, where both have assembly plants. But since both are virtual non-players in Europe, while in China both have seen their sales collapse over the past five years, integrating their global operations is a non-starter. 'In China,' warns Richter, 'we are not sure what a merger of Honda and Nissan would accomplish as both companies appear to be sinking ships. We do not see scale as the solution to their problems in China.' 'Indeed, given the steep downward trajectory of sales volume for both makers, we wonder if Honda and Nissan could be among the early ones that might throw in the towel.' On paper, Nissan's new management team seems better than the one before. Then again, none of them are Carlos Ghosn. In fact, none have succeeded in any marketplace. Christian Meunier, who quit Nissan in April 2019 and was part of the brain drain leaving Nissan after Ghosn's ouster, joined Jeep as president and CEO of the brand in May 2019. By the time he left in October 2023, Jeep sales in the US had fallen 30%. They fell another 9% in 2024. Meunier rejoined Nissan as chairperson of the management committee for the Americas in January. There can be no upside for the automaker's business unless US President Donald Trump reverses his decision to hit Mexican and other foreign-built cars, including Japanese, with 25% tariffs. Of Nissan's fiscal 2024 sales total in the US, more than 40% – an estimated 413,500 units – were imports, two-thirds from Mexico. Most of those from Mexico were compact and subcompact cars — Sentras, Versas and Kicks. It will take time and money to shift them to the US. Nissan earlier had announced plans to cut 9,000 jobs from its global workforce, including 2,000 in the US. Those plans have now been put on hold, according to media reports. It is also not clear how tariffs might impact the timing of Nissan's new and freshened model lineup announced in late March. Jérémie Papin, who joined the executive committee as chief financial officer, oversaw the crash in sales and market share in the US market. In 2021, when Papin was named president of Nissan North America Inc. and chairperson of the management committee for the Americas, Nissan's share in the North American market was 6.9%; in the US market, 6.2%. Stephen Ma, who will run Nissan's China operation, was CFO at Nissan's China joint venture, Dongfeng Motor Corporation, but has almost no experience in operations including marketing and sales. And Espinosa, according to his critics, has no operational experience. And there is no one on Nissan's board who has. Shukan Diamond, a weekly business magazine, has reported that Espinosa wasn't the first choice to succeed Uchida and that the Nissan's nomination committee was split on his nomination. There may be no fixes for Nissan short of an outside auto manufacturer with deep pockets coming in and taking over. This is easier said than done and is believed to be one reason why Honda backed out of a proposed merger in February. Talks with Foxconn, reportedly another potential partner, should only be taken seriously if Nissan is making a full-throated move into electric vehicles (it can't) or if it wants to bring back Jun Seki in some capacity. Nissan named Seki deputy COO on November 1, 2019, when the automaker announced that Makoto Uchida would be its president and Ashwani Gupta its COO. Seki left Nissan in December as the odd man out in the post-Carlos Ghosn board restructuring. Now 64, he is chief strategy officer at Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn). In all of the reporting about Uchida's firing and Ivan Espinosa's hiring, there is only one major media article about Nissan's board, which voted unanimously to promote Uchida in October 2019, and then, with many of the same members, voted to elevate Espinosa, a largely untested executive, in March of this year. If the Shukan Diamond article is accurate, there is a clear split on Nissan's board about how to move forward, including whether to try to become a Honda subsidiary. At least three directors, including Nissan chairman, Yasushi Kimura, a retired energy industry executive, seem ready to do so. Roger Schreffler is a veteran Japan automotive writer and a former president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
From copies to innovations – the origin and rise of Japanese electric guitars (and the truth about ‘lawsuit' guitars)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. It's the late '70s, and Paul Stanley of KISS tells an interviewer about the band's great successes – he guesses they've sold something like 20 million records, and they're just back from a Japanese tour. It was there, he says, that he found out more about the abilities of Japanese guitar makers. He discovered they have the skills, as he puts it, 'to make anything'. That's a lot more than can be said for America at the moment, he adds. 'Japan,' Stanley concludes, 'really is the country of the future.' Japan's guitar industry was certainly healthy when he made those comments, and it surely had no reason to doubt that the future would be just as rosy. It had overcome a shaky start, when critics said it simply copied well-known designs, and it had weathered some crippling ups and downs. Now, though, Japanese companies were showing themselves in many cases to be the equal of American makers – and in some cases perhaps to have overtaken them. Let's take a look at how that came about and who made it happen. The origins of perhaps the most famous Japanese guitar brand, Ibanez, lie with its parent company, Hoshino. Matsujirou Hoshino started the family business around 1900 in Nagoya, about 175 miles west of Tokyo, when he opened a store to sell books and stationery. He soon added a section for musical instruments run by his son, Yoshitarou, who set up Hoshino Gakki Ten – the Hoshino Musical Instrument Store company. Following a tour by the great Spanish classical guitarist Andrés Segovia in 1929, which inspired many Japanese people to take up the instrument, Hoshino began importing Salvador Ibáñez guitars from Spain. The Spanish factory closed by the late '30s, so Hoshino adopted the name for itself and made acoustic guitars in Japan, at first branded as Ibanez Salvador and soon simply as Ibanez. The company began to offer electric guitars around 1957, and from then until the mid-'60s Hoshino made some instruments itself in its new Tama Seisaku Shone factory, set up in 1959, but also bought in guitars from other Japanese firms. In Japan in the '60s, many budding young guitarists were just as keen to form groups and find stardom as anyone in America, Britain – or anywhere else that the pop bug had bitten Some of the early Japanese guitars from this time had features loosely borrowed from American Fender and Gibson, say, or British Burns models. Not exactly copies – they didn't duplicate every detail of an existing model – but more like Japanese interpretations of Western designs with touches of Eastern taste. In Japan in the '60s, many budding young guitarists were just as keen to form groups and find stardom as anyone in America, Britain – or anywhere else that the pop bug had bitten. In Japan, the scene was known as Eleki and then Group Sounds, and bands such as The Spacemen, The Blue Comets, and The Jacks enjoyed success. Japanese companies, including the big names like Teisco and Hoshino/Ibanez, not only sold electrics to that growing home market but also began to actively export instruments, notably to wholesalers in Europe, the United States, Australia and elsewhere. And a complication arises here for anyone trying to grasp the ins and outs of Japanese guitar history. It ought to be simple: companies manufactured guitars and either sold them at home or exported them. However, many of the foreign customers who bought instruments from Japan had their own brand names put on the guitars. This is often called OEM – original equipment manufacturer – which means a company that makes a product to be sold by another company under its own name. It meant nearly identical instruments being sold in various locations bearing different brands and, conversely, guitars with one brand originating from a variety of sources. Add to this an array of often interrelated factories and sales agents and distributors, and the picture can be a baffling one. For example, the American and British firms that bought from Hoshino in the early days used brands such as Antoria and Star in the UK and Maxitone and Montclair in the USA, among several others, although some guitars did have Ibanez on them. Some Ibanez catalogues from the period feature guitars with blank headstocks, accentuating the 'your-name-here' policy. There was similar OEM activity at Teisco – a firm born in Tokyo in the '40s, adding guitars in 1952 and electrics a couple of years later. Its exports to Europe and America had brand names such as Audition, Top Twenty, Gemtone, Jedson, Mellowtone, Kent, Kingston, and Norma. Teisco also sold a line of models at home with its own Teisco brand and, from around 1965 in the USA, Teisco Del Rey. Teisco had success through its American distributors – at first Westheimer, who later bought from Kawai, and then WMI, who came onboard around the time the Teisco Del Rey brand name appeared. The Sears, Roebuck mail-order catalogue company was another US customer for Teisco, who provided some of the guitars Sears sold with its own Silvertone brand. And here's another wrinkle: as with many of the firms for whom Teisco made guitars, the Silvertone models exported to America by Teisco were sometimes almost identical to a Teisco-brand instrument sold at home. An example of this is the mid-60s four-pickup Silvertone 1437, which in the homeland was the Teisco ET-440. In 1965, Teisco sponsored a movie, Eleki No Wakadaisho ('The Young Electric Guitar Wizard'). It starred guitarist Yūzō Kayama as a member of the fictional Young Beats group, who entered a battle-of-the-bands competition – and, naturally, they all played Teisco guitars through Teisco amps. Despite such cultural landmarks, as well as the opening of a new factory in Okegawa and the export of instruments to Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the US and elsewhere, Teisco battled with financial problems. It declared bankruptcy early in '67 and was bought by Kawai, which continued to use the Teisco brand for a few more years. Rivalling Teisco and Hoshino/Ibanez as the big name in '60s Japanese guitars was Guyatone. It was founded by Mitsuo Matsuki in Tokyo in the 1930s, introduced its first solidbody electric in the mid-'50s, and its LG models in particular proved popular in Britain and elsewhere toward the end of that decade. These early LGs were sold in America by Buegeleisen & Jacobson (as Winston), and in Britain by Arbiter (as Guyatone) and JT Coppock (as Antoria). Guyatone's range and quality expanded during the '60s, with models such as the LG-160T, complete with a handy body-hole, as well as a couple of SG and MG hollowbodies, and the LG-200T, which had four pickups and multiple push-button selectors. Probably the best-known Guyatone today is the Sharp 5 signature model, introduced in 1967. The Sharp 5 band, part of the Group Sounds trend that spread across Japan at this time, was led by Munetaka Inoue and guitarist Nobuhiro Mine, and their break came in '67 when they signed to Columbia Records. Guyatone saw an opportunity for a liaison with the band, renaming its LG-350T guitar as the Sharp 5 model. Mine played the 350 Deluxe, with blue finish, three pickups and gold-plated metalwork. Kawai dates back to the 1920s, when Koichi Kawai started a keyboard company in Hamamatsu. The firm began making guitars in the 50s, expanding its Kawai-brand lines during the next decade and exporting widely to OEM customers. Among the brand names used in the US were Domino, Kent, Kimberly and TeleStar. By the late '60s Kawai had become another big player in Japanese guitar making. These companies still competed for attention in the home market, and a notable new contender in the mid-'60s was Yamaha. It was, of course, an old name, founded in the 1880s as a keyboard manufacturer and diversifying as the decades went by into many other areas, not least motorcycles. The first Yamaha budget electrics appeared in 1964, and then the better SG models two years later. Among these early SGs were the conventionally shaped and Fender-inspired SG-2 and 3, along with the reverse-body Mosrite-influenced SG-5 and 7, with an extended lower horn to the body and a long, slim headstock. The flipped-body style of Mosrite's Ventures model was a popular shape among Japanese makers following the American band's successful tour of the country in 1964. The Arai company, founded in Nagoya by the classical guitarist Shiro Arai in 1956, made classicals at first but added electric guitars in the early 60s, soon using the Aria and Aria Diamond brands. In the '70s and later the company would become better known for its Aria Pro II brand. Aria was the Japanese distributor of Fender guitars in the late '50s, so it's not surprising that some of its own models were Fender-like in appearance. Let's step aside for a moment and play 'Loser, Looker, Player'. We'll tell you ours, to get things going, and then you can have a go. LOSER: Our choice is an Ibanez copy of a Gibson double-neck. Did you say 'so what'? Ibanez introduced the line in 1974, about six years after Gibson had dropped its SG-style originals, and offered a six-string plus 12-string (model 2402) and a six-string plus bass (2404). So far, so Gibson. But here's our choice of Loser: Ibanez Model 2406 boasted two six-string necks. Correct, two six-strings on one (rather heavy) body. Gibson had never made such a thing, of course, but Ibanez had other ideas. This guitar, it enthused, would be good to have to hand in 'open-tuning slide guitar and standard tuning'. We rest our (rather large) case. LOOKER: An impressive example of over-the-top Teisco Del Rey style was the solidbody Spectrum 5, introduced in 1966. It was a luscious creation, with a thin, curving, sculpted mahogany body, covered with what Teisco claimed as 'seven coats of lacquer', parachute-shape fingerboard inlays, a spring-less vibrato, two jacks for mono or stereo output, and three pickups, split so as to assist with the Spectrum 5's stereo feed when required. The model name derived from what Teisco described as 'five different basic colour tones [that] can be produced with this unusual guitar', indicating the colourful pickup and phase switches on the upper part of the model's pickguard. Spectacular! PLAYER: How about a Tokai Les Paul Reborn? The firm began soon after World War II in Hamamatsu and launched Tokai electrics in 1967. 10 years later, the copies began. Yes, there were many copies about, but Tokai in particular and its Les Pauls-styles (and Strat-styles and more) made players think anew about what 'Japanese guitar' could mean – and sent shockwaves through parts of the instrument industry. The Les Pauls came with a few different names during the key period from 1978 to '85 or so, and they looked the part, too, some bearing 'wow-could-it-be-a-'59' flamey tops, and many found them to be great players at decent prices. One of Tokai's cheeky British ads turned the tables with a headline that read: 'Beware of imitations.' This did not go unnoticed. There was boom and bust in the Japanese guitar business in the period from 1966 to '68. One of the factors may have been the USA's doubling of customs duties on imported electrics, and domestically some makers were caught with excessive stocks when demand died, at home as well as abroad. By 1976, Les Paul copies were the most numerous in the Ibanez catalogue, with more than 20 varieties on offer Whatever the causes, the bust toppled Teisco, Guyatone and others, resulting in a reset of the industry. Some of the stronger businesses survived, including Aria, Fujigen and Yamaha. But the upheaval at this time provides yet another complication for anyone expecting a straightforward situation where guitar A was made by B, has the brand C, and was sold by D. The rest of the alphabet will come in handy if you want to dig deeper. To generalise, then, it was in the early '70s that a wider move to copies began in Japan. These could still be described as interpretations of the real American things, but now there was no doubt about the models that provided the inspiration. Hoshino had been sourcing guitars from Teisco and Fujigen Gakki since it shifted its Tama factory to drums only in 1965, and by 1970 Fujigen was its main supplier, coinciding with this emphasis on copies. Hoshino continued as a trading company, one that buys and sells products without manufacturing anything itself. Fuji Gen Gakki Seizou Kabushikigaisha – the Fuji Stringed-Instrument Manufacturing Corporation – was started by Yuuichirou Yokouchi and Yutaka Mimura and produced its first guitar, a basic nylon-string acoustic, during 1960, adding electrics three years later. It had a new factory operational by 1965, based in Matsumoto, home to several furniture makers and guitar builders. As well as its OEM work, Fujigen had its Greco brand, in partnership with distributor Kanda Shokai. Fujigen's Greco and Hoshino/Ibanez copies were among the most popular of the period, and some of the initiative to make and develop them came from American and British outlets. The first British distributor to buy Ibanez-brand guitars from Hoshino was Maurice Summerfield, who started doing business with them in 1964. From the early '70s, he added the CSL brand for electrics alongside Ibanez, and then the Sumbro brand as a cheaper line below Ibanez and CSL. In America, one of the outlets Hoshino worked with was Harry Rosenbloom's Medley Music store in Philadelphia, and his Elger Company became Hoshino's eastern US distributor for Tama and Elger guitars, Elger banjos and Star drums. In 1972, Hoshino and Elger set up a joint venture to become the American distributor of Ibanez guitars as well as Hoshino's other brands and instruments, and a few years later Hoshino took sole ownership of the operation that had become its valuable American HQ. Staff at the new offices, both Japanese and American, noticed that at first the quality wasn't great on some of the guitars shipped over to them, and they fed regular suggestions and ideas back to Japan, many of which were used to broaden and improve the lines. Maurice Summerfield in Britain recommended that Hoshino add to the line a copy of a Gibson Flying V, recently given a low-key revival by Gibson. As with the original Les Pauls, players at the time were rediscovering the excellence of old Vs. Ibanez launched a Flying V copy in 1973 based on a late-'60s original that Summerfield sent to them, and soon a Gibson double-neck copy appeared, again thanks to Summerfield's encouragement. By 1976, Les Paul copies were the most numerous in the Ibanez catalogue, with more than 20 varieties on offer. In the USA, they were pitched from the cheapest, the best-selling bolt-neck $260 Les Custom 2350, through the $299.50 Les Deluxe 59'er 2340 in sunburst and the $340 Sunlight Special 2342IV, and up to the most expensive – a set-neck version of the 2350, the $495 2650CS Solid Body DX. That same year, Gibson's regular line of five Les Paul solidbody models ranged from the $599 Les Paul Deluxe to the $739 Les Paul Custom, so it's not difficult to understand one of the prime attractions of the copies, beyond any considerations of accuracy or quality. There were many other Japanese companies making copies, of varying quality and exported with any number of brands, including Penco, Mann, Jason, Kasuga, Heerby, Burny, Tokai, Fernandes, Honey, Conrad, Ventura, Fresher, Electra and HS Anderson. Fujigen and Kanda Shokai's house brand, Greco, was in the upper bracket of quality, and by 1981 Greco's Stratocaster copy line ranged from the SE-380, which retailed at 38,000 yen, up to the SE-1200, at 120,000 yen. A straightforward conversion into US dollars of the time provides an equivalent range of about $260 to $530. That same year, Fender's cheapest Stratocaster retailed for $720. You won't get far in the world of Japanese electric guitar history without coming across the word 'lawsuit'. In the '70s, Ibanez in particular and Japanese brands in general were irritating the hell out of Gibson, Fender and the other US companies targeted by the copyists. It wasn't until 1977 that Gibson made a legal complaint to Ibanez (through its US arm, Elger). Gibson and Ibanez/Elger settled out of court, with Elger agreeing to stop infringing Gibson's trademarked headstock design and to stop using Gibson-like model names in sales material. In February 1978, Gibson's complaint was closed. In fact, Ibanez was already using a new headstock design, and had been offering some original-design guitars for a number of years. That term 'lawsuit' stems from this brief legal spat and is often used these days to describe any Japanese copy guitar of the period, whether or not the brand suffered legal action. Oddly, it's gained a cachet, presumably because 'lawsuit-era guitar' sounds more dramatic than '70s Japanese guitar'. One of the reasons Fender chose Fujigen to manufacture its first Squier guitars in the early '80s was because Fender's strategy to beat the Japanese copies was simply to make better copies itself, with the added prestige of its own brand. And Fujigen's existing Greco guitars proved that Fujigen was already good at what Fender required. Gibson later reset its Epiphone brand in similar ways – and Epiphones had first been made in Japan way back in 1969. These developments, and guitars such as Yamaha's SG2000 in the '70s and the Ibanez Steve Vai-related JEMs of the '80s, would underline a new confidence among Japanese makers. One of the original designs that Ibanez (and Greco) introduced well before the Gibson legal complaint was The Flash, introduced in 1975 and soon renamed the Iceman (Ibanez) and M series (Greco). There were influences at work, for sure, the body looking as if someone had given a Firebird a curved, pointed base and added a Ricky-like hooked lower horn. But it added up to an attention-grabbing original. And in 1978, a signature version for Paul Stanley appeared. Ibanez also made him a custom PS10 with a cracked-mirror front, providing sparkling reflections at KISS's already dazzling shows. No wonder Stanley thought that in the guitar-making world, Japan was the country of the future. This article first appeared in Guitarist magazine. Subscribe and save.
USA Today
26-03-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Rikuya Hoshino Tee Times, Live Stream, TV Coverage
Rikuya Hoshino Tee Times, Live Stream, TV Coverage | Texas Children's Houston Open, March 27-30, 2025 Rikuya Hoshino heads into the 2025 Texas Children's Houston Open at Memorial Park Golf Course with +35000 odds after missing the cut at the Valspar Championship, his most recent event. Below, we'll analyze his recent form to help you make your best bets on Hoshino before he takes to the course in Houston, TX. How to watch Rikuya Hoshino at the Texas Children's Houston Open Date: March 27-30, 2025 March 27-30, 2025 TV: Golf Channel Golf Channel Location: Houston, TX Houston, TX Course: Memorial Park Golf Course Memorial Park Golf Course Live Stream: Watch LIVE with Fubo! What time does Rikuya Hoshino tee off? Round 1 Tee Time: 3:09 PM ET 3:09 PM ET Round 2 Tee Time: 9:59 AM ET ESPN+ is the new home of PGA TOUR LIVE. Sign up now to access 4,300+ hours of live coverage from 35 PGA TOUR tournaments this year. Rikuya Hoshino's last five tournaments Recent stats for Hoshino Hoshino has headed to the clubhouse below par six times, completed his day without a bogey once and finished four rounds with a better-than-average score over his last 12 rounds played. He has carded a top-five score once and a top-10 score twice in his last 12 rounds played. Hoshino has recorded a score within three shots of the day's best in two of his last 12 rounds, while finishing within five strokes of the top score of the day three times. Rikuya Hoshino odds to win Golf odds courtesy of BetMGM Sportsbook. Odds updated Tuesday at 5:18 PM ET. For a full list of sports betting odds, access USA TODAY Sports Betting Scores Odds Hub.
