Japanese Music Industry
Hiro Miyaji is the president of Miyaji Music, which opened in 1917 in Japan. He later expanded the wholesale business his grandfather started to include retailing. The company began providing wood instrument accessories such as violin bows. Miyaji Music had been distributing their products all...
Ryoichi Sasaki was hired by Yamaha in 1967 working in the method book division. In 1978, he formed his own publishing company, Rittor Music, which focuses on producing music-themed magazines, including guitar and technology magazines. Ryoichi has also been very active in copyrights and the rights...
Takeshi Inomata is the noted jazz drummer who, among other things, helped design the first percussive instruments for Yamaha. His work with Yamaha took place during the early 1960s when the company began providing drum and percussive instruments and accessories. It was a contribution Takeshi was...
Kazuo Matsushita is the son of the founder of Audio-Technica, a creative and innovative company that has been an important part of the music industry since the early 1960s. When Kazuo began working full time for the company, he led the teams that focused on the designs and production of...
Motohichi Harada led the movement that brought the very first marching band to Japan, which took place in 1963. He has since worked for the NHK for over thirty years and formed the Japan Marching Band Directors Association in 1971 and the Japan Marching Band Association the following year. Both...
Toru Hora was classically trained on the piano and attended Juilliard. He joined the Buffet Crampon company in 1964 and both established and served as president of the Buffet Japan branch three years later. Much of his effort in Japan was to establish the brass instruments into the market and to...
Isao Tomita was the world-renowned composer of electronic music who famously used the Moog synthesizers to create award winning music that influenced a generation of music makers! Among his most incredible contributions to music was his use of multitrack recordings to create polyphonic...
Tadahiro Sato loved music and baseball! In fact after playing baseball for many years in his youth, he joined the music industry while playing baseball all along. His sister's husband established Star Music in Japan in 1950, where Tadahiro began working four years later. He and his brother-in-...
Kenji Chiwaki followed in the footsteps of Toru Hora as the president of Buffet Crampon Japan. Hora-san opened the branch in Tokyo in 1967 and helped establish the brand within the Asian market. Kenji joined the company in 1986 and has focused on the three elements he learned from his predecessor...
Yutaha Kurihara formed his own case company in Japan, which came into its own in the 1989s when he introduced a line of cases in a variety of colors. Since that time Yutaha has been very active in the Tokyo Manufacturing Association. He found his involvement and volunteer work with the...