Just an fyi, Fuji was their own thing; also the last major domestic Japanese bike maker to outsource production to Taiwan in the mid-1990s, a late start that sadly led to the company's demise later in that decade. While extremely rare in the U.S. after '94, every so often you can occasionally still find some of these later Fujis; they're fine bikes. The current company is owned by the same conglomerate that also owned the Raleigh brand for a while, and their bikes are made in Taiwan. That said, from about 2000 to 2004, the last top-line steel Fujis were made by Toyo, in the same facility where Rivendell outsourced their Taiwanese frames.

Miyata is still around, and I've heard they still produce their bikes in Japan, but are now a much, much smaller company than they were in the 1980s; I also heard they were hit pretty hard by the great Tohoku tsunami.

(Edit: not to be confused with Koga-Miyata: these are a European-made joint-venture, makers of fine expedition touring bikes.)

I seem to recall that Takaras (like Nishiki) were made by Kawamura, and Shoguns were made by Yamaguchi (who, like Kuwahara & Kawamura made frames for several U.S. distributed brands); I seem to recall someone on C&V mentioning that Sekai were also made in Japan by Yamaguchi.

Not to pick a bone (or scab), but wouldn't that comparison be more like pumpkins to... cherries? Wouldn't a mass-produced Kawamura be a ridiculously bad comparison to... say, a 3Rensho or a Zunow? Or an an Alps?

Anyway...

That's as far as I'm willing to contribute to this thread, as a particular element of DEEPLY misplaced, jingoistic flag-waving exhibited herein grates up against my ability to civilly restrain my wit.

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