Lawsuit?

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bluejennot, yours is the same one as this?

Post your Tokai bass pics, please!
Same model and colour but mine is a different bass .<a href=""><img src="" title="source: imgur.com" /></a> <a href=""><img src="" title="source: imgur.com" /></a> The old 7okai logo is also visible on my bass too.
 
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I guess I got yours confused with DaSantos' bass.

bluejennot, does yours have the ghost of an earlier decal?
 
Just want to say that this is an excellent piece of research on the CBS vs. Tokai topic!

Here's a little and (unfortunately) irrelevant tangent on the initial Norlin vs. Elger "lawsuit": I'm occasionally researching obscure Japanese import guitars I remember from my own past (or have owned), one of them is "Pearl" - yes the drum company Pearl. Long story short, Jack Westheimer helped Pearl in the very early 70s to set up a stringed instruments line and Pearl sold copies of Gibson, Fender and Rickenbacker designs throughout (to my current knowledge more in intervals) the 70s until 1982.

The funny plot twist: The Norlin Corporation was the distributor of Pearl in the US and their UK subsidiary, Norlin Music in the UK (maybe more places). The guitars were likely not officially sold in the US but they were in the UK, by Norlin. In other words, Norlin distributed copies of their own (OK) but also competitor (oops) designs at the very same time they threatened Elger/Hoshino USA with legal actions for doing so. 🙃
 
Before I waste another afternoon trying to find that out - does anyone know when Tokai moved to their current location, or what the address* of the old factory was? Trying to find out anything about the 1984 corporate reorganization seems hopeless but I thought this may have some context with giving up the piano factory/production. Just another angle for research.

BTW, Tokai's piano production is also where the "Goldstar" moniker comes from.

*Not the old company PO Box address 36 Terawaki-cho, the actual factory address that is.
 
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Another example is "There was no lawsuit...."
I'm afraid I completely misread this (maybe because the word "lawsuit" alone is triggering me). Of course you referred to the Tokai lawsuit(s).

I believe they changed the name of the company in 1983/84 which would indicate there was reorganization.

According to this blog (already cited a lot in the "Lawsuit" thread) the company name change happened 1986?

My old 1980 AS200.

Ah yes, you mentioned you had one of those. :) Which Ibbys are rare?
 
Looks like Blue Suede Music Ltd. got into trouble themselves a few years later (reasons unclear but one of them being that they owed Tokai lots of money):

https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/tokai-move/11291
Re moving into new factory, I found this bit:

Screenshot 2023-05-14 at 01.04.43.jpg

So that looks like it didn't happen in the 80s and maybe the old factory still exists but is not being used and generates no news to find on Google*. Cold scent.

Here's the "dormitory building" (of the Tokai factory) where the guitars are assembled now (the NC-machinery that cuts the parts is said to be in a different location).

https://goo.gl/maps/ZkJRpR2whh8xLgE68
This is a fresh image from April 2023. If you move two steps up the street towards the parking cars, Streetview switches to 2012 imagery.

* At the corner of the building between the vending machine and the entrance you see a white rectangle, thats the company sign from the old factory and that looks like it doesn't exist anymore, or changed ownership.
 
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Good work!

That 2006 date is interesting re: Fender. I was thinking closer to 2009. Need to check my notes.
 
Re the alleged 1984 lawsuit - The worst thing is that we don't even know which country the Japanese WP article and blog sites (found a few more) echoing the WP article are referring to. My assumption is that it was Japan, since the allegation can only be found there.

Alas the Japanese legal research help sites are a mix of broken links and paid services. The prime free search tool seems to be 裁判例検索 | 裁判所 - Courts in Japan and I tested it by finding the Gibson vs. Fernandes case of 2000. That was the Tokyo High Court in times when the internet existed though, and the search site says that their records are incomplete - I guess 80s cases are just not fully recorded in electronic form.

"Fender" or フェンダー and 東海楽器研究所 (Tokai's company name until1986 ) brings up nothing relevant, neither does 東海楽器 with one exception I found kind of interesting (but alas irrelevant too): The name Tokai shows up in a 2007 infringement claim Fillmore Co. Ltd vs. Kurokomo (this is part of the messy "Moseley vs. Ed Roman and Mosrite Japan, Mosrite Japan vs the other Mosrite Japan" chain of legal disputes). Fillmore Co. Ltd is the appellant, Kurokomo the appellee:

In addition, since around 2000, the appellant has owned Tokai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Co., Ltd. located in Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture
That would mean at that point in time (2007), Tokai was owned by Fillmore Co. Ltd / Yusa Noriyuki.

Back to the topic - I think a Japanese lawyer should know best how to retrieve such information in Japan, if anyone knows a guitar loving Japanese lawyer... :)

If that was something that happened in the US, that could've affected only Tokai USA and there should be a sign of it somewhere. Trying to find something in https://www.fjc.gov/research/idb turned up nothing. What is "Tokai USA" anyway? Besides the obsucre IMC link, there was a Lakeview company and another one it seems.
 
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1984

CBS sells Fender

Tokai is allegedly sued by Fender in the US for "manufacturing counterfeit products". (Still have no documents to support this claim)

Tokai allegedly files for bankruptcy under the "Corporate Rehabilitation Law". (Still have no documents to support this claim)
Is this what you are referring to?

I couldn’t find anything either.

The 1982 lawsuit between CBS/Arbiter and Blue Suede is all I found.

Another member pointed out a later one with Gibson.
 
Yeah, for all we know now this all started 1982. Why exactly (and when exactly) Tokai really got into trouble - only someone in Hamamatsu with some knowledge about the numbers would be able to tell us something substantial I guess. To conclude or allude that the guitar business taking damage from the setback in the UK was responsible for the trouble could be a bit far-fetched. Sure, the UK was the biggest market in Europe at that time but OTOH the only thing that lasted at Tokai was the guitar business!

Let's not forget how much the company had branched out, how their former bestseller products were maybe not exactly booming in popularity anymore and that they had ventured into the piano business in 1978, just of all in the shadow of the mighty Yamaha and Kawai piano factories.
 
I deleted my comment, so am not sure what you are referring to? Are you talking about lawsuits and the supposed reorganization.

There absolutely was a lawsuit in 1982. It led directly to the change in the decals in the UK > block logo.

The whole 1984 Fender lawsuit assertion that guy Ryu made is unsupported as far as I can tell, but I have plenty of proof for one in 1982.

And the assertion that the company changed its name to Tokai Gakki in 1986 as an indication of reorganization is unsupported as far as I can tell.

They called themselves Tokai Gakki forever.

From the post in the Lawsuit thread that I translated from some guy named Ryu that provides no proof of his claims said:

After that, Tokai changed its name to "Tokai Gakki Mfg. Co., Ltd." in 1986 and established a new company.”

Jury is still out on the bankruptcy claim in my mind.

But that stone monument at the factory with the name Tokai Musical Instruments triggered my memory about all this talk of a name change and I was wondering if it was a clue as to its age. I’m still not sure.
 
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deleted my comment, so am not sure what you are referring to? Are you talking about lawsuits and the supposed reorganization.

You quoted me mentioning a Japanese blog that stated there was a lawsuit in 1984:

According to this blog (already cited a lot in the "Lawsuit" thread) the company name change happened 1986?

You then stated that the trouble started 1982 (with the only documented lawsuit being Dallas/Arbiter for CBS vs. Blue Suede Music), noted the missing evidence for a 1984 lawsuit and doubted the accuracy of the data gathered in that Japanese blog, and I reacted on this passage in their text (which is just the text from Japanese Wikipedia, just like the 1984 date) :

Tokai Musical Instruments lost the lawsuit and the sale of musical instruments was stopped by a court order, resulting in poor business conditions and bankruptcy.

I have some trouble buying this "guitar lawsuit -> bankruptcy" causality, and mentioned a few things that could've gotten Tokai as a pretty diverse company more in trouble than that, or at least piled up on guitar branch difficulties on some markets so that causality appears to be questionable. Also, if the guitar branch setback was 1982/83 and the "bankruptcy" happened 3 years later, that needs some explaining why the guitar branch was responsible and not the other branches of the company and how that took so long when the sales and popularity of the guitars seemed fine to us bystanders at that time.

Also if I understood that right (or if the Japanese law is comparable to e.g. German law), "corporate reorganization law" is different from "bankruptcy". Actually, I don't understand any of that at all but here's a - yawn - explanation.
 
But that stone monument at the factory with the name Tokai Musical Instruments triggered my memory about all this talk of a name change and I was wondering if it was a clue as to its age. I’m still not sure.

We don't know what happened to the Terawaki factory and when, Edit: We kinda know now. they would've kept the stone in any scenario (selling it/demolition) I guess. At any rate, The company obviously had to shrink substantially for some reason so the reorganization story is certainly plausible. At some point I tried to find out when they stopped making pianos but that was a dead end of course - the piano guys are much less curious than us guitar cork sniffers. Edit: This is semi-documented as being 1985 now.
 
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Here's a little tidbit that fits into the timeline of the 1982 events:


"The distributors in the U.K. for Tokai (pronounced tock-aye) are Blue Suede Music of Lancaster, and initially they will be importing around 55 of the 100 or so models in the Tokai range; they've already sold the first shipment."

That sounds like BS Music had just started doing business with Tokai at that point, and the second shipment the article is alluding to is the one that got seized. That begs the question what was before BS Music became the sole distributor.

However, maybe that article isn't exactly a monument for trustworthy precision...

The Tokai factory in Hamamatsu, just outside Tokyo, has for some time now been producing instruments under license for some of the major names including the Yamaha company. The factory is huge, ten times the size of either the Gibson Kalamazoo or Fender Fullerton plants. Word has it that Tokai owner Mac Seshimoto has done a deal with Fender, and will now be producing instruments for them at his factory.
Hm yeah, in a similar way Exeter is just outside London and the statement about the factory size is...as interesting as the last part. :)
 

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