Originally Posted by
vannergy
When I was working in a bike shop back in the mid-70's, the word was, most of the Japanese bikes were made in one or two or maybe three factories. Nishiki, azuki, takara, mizutani (the lesser known of all), fuji, kobe, shogun, lotus, centurion/REI, volkscycle, campanayia?, and many, many, more. I'm not sure what all, or if all I've listed were from the same factory. I appreciate the fuji photos along side the mizutani and the nishiki coment. These comments varify what I thought might have urban-legend slants to them.
There were certainly more than two or three, try at least 2 or 3 dozen! I'm currently working on a chart to cross reference C&V brands to Asian manufacturers and their serial number formats. I'm just about to top 100 brands and companies!
Of the ones you've listed, Azuki and Nishiki were manufactured by primarily by Giant and Kawamura. Kuwahara manufactured most Takara. Centurion was manufactured by Fairly, Katakura, Matsu****a, Mikki, Tano and others. Lotus was manufactured by Tsunoda and Pacific, among others. Shogun came primarily from Mikki and Yamaguchi. Fuji was manufacturerd by Fuji and various subcontractors. I'm not sure about the others but we've already hit a dozen different manufacturers just covering a portion of your list. If you want an idea of the number of manufacturers used by brands, just check out my Centuion Serial Number Database, Fuji Serial Number Database and Nishiki Serial Number Database threads on this forum.