gugie 

Good knowledge.
More good knowledge
That's my backup plan
Wha? Kinda hammered from all that beer...

conspiratemus1

Just doing my bit for the filibuster.

cudak888 

Good knowledge.

-Kurt

nlerner

Well, Bob, as much as I like your specter theory, @brodycyle has weighed in, confirming that his H. Tano made frame does indeed exist, and he has the paperwork to prove it:

Manufacturer of Centurion Japan frames?

cudak888 

Just so that post doesn't get lost to time in that thread, this is what @brodycycle said:With that, please excuse me - have to call my bookie to make a bet that the OP will claim this isn't "enough" proof.

-Kurt

jonwvara 

Yeah! It isn't even notarized!

BFisher 

This thread is unfortunate. The topic could have been presented differently and likely would have garnered valuable discussion. Someone has doubts about the origins of certain bicycles, and for good reason. There isn't much out there.

Whether or not other people on the internet take beliefs or likelihoods and present them elsewhere as facts, well, good luck trying to control that behavior! It seems to me that T-Mar has always said things like leading candidate when describing the Tano/Centurion connection, not definite manufacturer, unless I've missed something. Was the "orthodoxy" laid out by those with the experience, or did readers run with suppositions?

And at the end, when all is read and done, nlerner is right. The targeted audience generally has little reason to care about what was written. Not the topic, mind you, but what was presented and concluded. It was a whole lot of writing/reading for no new information of much consequence, and done so in a manner that suggested the writer had some standing as an authority - piece by piece as if building up to a revelation which never came. We are no closer to knowing the origins after the op's presentation, and it seems that a piece of the evidence was either misread or gleaned over. Tano is listed as a manufacturer in one of the op's own images. Now we have an actual bike out there that is a few small bits of documentation away from confirming that.

I don't know why people present this way to like-minded strangers on the internet. It isn't conversational, or inviting. It is actually rather strange. What is there to gain?

Bianchi84

BFisher Thank you. That seems like a good note to terminate this thread on. (IMHO,of course).

pastorbobnlnh 

...and in taking a look at the brodycycle post, I dug a little deeper and spotted this post from T-Mar in the same thread!
T-Mar Shares Knowledge about Japanese Bicycle Manufacturing and Trading:
Does T-Mar demand that what he writes is Orthodoxy? In no conceivable way does he imply what he writes is infallible.

Now why would we want to end this fun? T-Mar, who is always helpful and generous in his sharing of information, needs to be vindicated from the meddling the OP has attempted.

panzerwagon 

I, for one, find the subject matter interesting enough, just don't prefer it come from Zeus himself, having recently descended from Olympus looking to quell some strawman deeply rooted belief I never realized I held about the origins of my own Centurion bikes.

Perhaps I need to go create more shim stock...

cudak888 

Moreover, he pretty much addressed the only real point the OP was criticizing in the first place.

In 2017.



-Kurt

Hummer

I have already discussed Japan's Bicycle Guide(JBG). Go to Part 6 of my series of posts. I already described the 1951, 1952 and 1956 JBG advertisements of H. Tano and Company. There is a picture of the 1956 JBG advertisement.

You can explain the 1952 advertisement just as well as I can. You just have to think about for a while. The analysis that I will give you will take some effort to make it clear, but here goes.

Explanation 1: breakdown the claim in the advertisement.

Break the whole claim "Exporters and Manufacturers of Bicycles, Parts and Accessories" into four separate claims.

claim 1. Exporters of Bicycles, parts and accessories.

claim 2. Manufacturers of bicycles.

claim 3. Manufacturers of bicycle parts.

claim 4. Manufacturers of bicycle accessories.


I don't think that there are many people who would dispute claim 1 about exporter, for H. Tano and Company.

If you want to be really strict about the interpretation of the whole claim then the logic requires all three claims about manufacturing be true. This would require that H. Tano and Company manufacture some bicycles, some bicycle parts and some bicycle accessories.

Did the export company H. Tano and Company manufacture this array of items? Maybe.


Explanation 2

I will not use a strict interpretation of the whole claim. Then, to make the whole claim true only one of claim 2, claim 3, or claim 4 needs to be true. Think about that for a minute.

If H. Tano and Company manufactured bells for bicycles, that is a bicycle accessory. That would make claim 4 true. Therefore the whole claim about "exporters and manufactures of bicycles, parts and accessories"
could be consider true. It also could be considered misleading but none the less technically true.


Explanation 3: "Manufacturer of Bicycles"

For argument sake let's say that the above claim 3 and claim 4 are false. Then claim 2 needs to be true. Claim 2 is "Manufacturer of bicycles".

Within the Japanese bicycle industry what is meant by "Manufacturer of bicycles"? Apparently this can mean more than one thing.

Mr. Tatsuzo Ueda of Kansai University in Osaka Japan wrote a paper entitled "The Development of the bicycle industry in Japan After World War II", published in 1981.
In this paper Mr. Tatsuzo Ueda explains two types of "finished-bicycle" manufacturers.

There are two types of finished-bicycle manufacturers.

The first is known as "industrial type" manufacturers.
They are capable of producing frames and other specific parts
on their own and of achieving assembly by a modern system including a conveyor line.

The second is "factor type" manufacturers.
They have no facilities of their own to produce parts and
merely assemble parts purchased from outside.


If the export company H. Tano and Company manufactured bicycles, which type of manufacturer where they? In reading about Japanese export companies, H. Tano and Company were never mentioned as one of the large export companies. Certainly no where near as large as C.Itoh and Company, Marubeni-Iida, or Mitsui and Company.

Where would H. Tano and Company get the financial resources to be an "industrial type" manufacturer of bicycles and compete with Bridgestone and Matsush¡ta/National. Both Bridgestone and Matsush¡ta/National bicycle divisions had the financial backing of parent companies. Their advantage in terms of economies of scale would have been large. Even Miyata could not compete with these two bicycle manufacturing companies without assistance. (The reference for this is in Part 5).

I find it difficult to believe that the export company H. Tano and Company could be an "industrial type" manufacturer of bicycles. Maybe they were.

I find it more plausible that H. Tano and Company may have assembled bicycles at some time in there existence.


Explanation 4: Other exporters' JBG advertisements.

If you want to understand the 1952 JBG H. Tano and Company advertisement you should read and understand all of the advertisements in the 1952 JBG and focus on the export companies advertisements.

There are several companies in the export section of advertisements that say "Manufacturers and exporters of bicycles, parts and accessories" or some similar claim.

Two of those companies also have advertising in the manufacturers section. Both manufacturer advertisements show bicycle parts, not finished bicycles. Therefore, their claim to be "manufacturer and exporter" can be considered technically true.

The other companies, like the exporter H. Tano and Company, do not have manufacturer advertisements and are not on the JBG manufacturers list. Yet they all claim to be manufacturers.

Draw your own conclusion about the meaning of all these advertisements in the 1952 JBG.



Now I have two questions about the Japan's Bicycle Guides for you.

In some of the early volumes there are two lists, manufacturers and exporters. I have only seen H. Tano and Company on the exporter list. Did H. Tano and Company ever appear on the manufacturers list in the early JBG volumes?




Question 2

In the 1970s, H. Tano and Company have a big customer in the United States of America and a big customer in Germany to which they are supplying bicycles. If H. Tano and Company is manufacturing those bicycles for their two big customers, don't you think their advertising in the JBG would promote that. The Japan's Bicycle Guide is the venue to promote your success as a manufacturer of bicycle to potential customers.

Did H. Tano and company promote themselves as manufacturer of bicycles in the 1970s?

I have seen the 1971, 1972 and 1976 JBG advertising for H. Tano and Company. No mention of manufacturing.

Why?

What about H. Tano and Company advertisements in other JBG volumes from the 1970s? Any mention of manufacturing?



Now, I have spent a lot of time researching this boring topic on two obscure points about vintage Japanese bicycles. There are more important things going on in the world, as you are well aware. I have a life to get back to. I may not have time to answer any more questions. So please excuse me if I do not reply to every question.

You may be able to think through answers for yourself. You may want to pose your questions to the originator of the ideas under discussion.

mosinglespeeder

noobinsf 

Wow, you can cut the tedium with a knife here. A dull knife. (See what I did there?)

Oldairhead 

You do not know how happy it makes me to hear this!

panzerwagon 

Those goalposts must be using that 30 year old campy grease I saw on the auction site.

I’m giving up so I don’t end up like this guy:



Ref: https://xkcd.com/386/

RiddleOfSteel

Bloody hell, is the contradiction and irony of all of this lost on you? You spend considerable time researching and writing about a subject that you say is boring to you and is also obscure (thus even more uninteresting to yourself). So why even bother? Additionally, you continually demean a well-regarded member and the genuinely curious and generally congenial BF C&V membership--who also happen to be pretty knowledgeable--at large! Your lack of respectfulness has been ever-present, as has your increasingly-apparent lack of research on the subject or BF members (which have been pointed out multiple times). All of this for a complete non-conclusion. Simply baffling. And then the temerity to condescend us while needing to leave us 'lesser' members mired in our deficient mental state, confusion, and general misprioritization of thought. That's rich. And actually, it sounds like you're condescending yourself/this whole thread's 'purpose' as well with that statement, which...is pretty incredible. I don't even know what to say to that other than "Good day, sir," and please, in the future, post about something that is interesting to you in an enthusiastic and engaging manner so that we can all enjoy it, and thus all proverbial boats rise.

3alarmer 

3alarmer 

...only when speaking ex cathedra, and such transmissions are always clearly referenced as such.

cudak888 

$3.50.

-Kurt

pastorbobnlnh 

?
Maybe $4.20?

tkamd73 

OP obviously spends way more time on bike forums then I do. But like any Internet forum, there is some really good stuff here, some total BS, and some stuff in between. Thus you can learn, and be entertained at the same time.
Tim

gugie 

Just a guess, clue is you have to pronounce that "tree fiddy"?

One more post here and the onslaught of cat videos begins...

gugie 

Like he said.

The OP's posts are reminding me of mtn_bik, or whatever the heck his handle was.

cudak888 

Remember when $3.50 was the default reply for every new member who came here demanding a valuation for their Very Rare 1940's Free Spirit?

-Kurt