Sekine were indeed initially made in Japan. They did however build quite a few bikes in Manitoba Canada. They set up in Canada to avoid the insanely high duties that were imposed on imported bikes in the 70's by the Canadian government in an attempt to protect the Canadian cycle industry (mainly CCM and Canadian Raleigh at the time!). Once they started to build in Canada, they immediately claimed a good market share aas they were far superiorto anything offered at similar prices by CCM and Raleigh. Sekine continued to build in Canada until the early 80's at which time the duties charged on bikes were severely reduced. The shops that I worked in sold thousands of these bikes.