G. Kawakami, 90; Turned Small Firm Into Yamaha
Genichi Kawakami, the man who made Yamaha a household name around the world through an odd mix of musical instruments and motorbikes, died Saturday in Hamamatsu, Japan, the industrial city where his two companies were located. He was 90.
The entrepreneur sometimes dubbed “the emperor” had been hospitalized for several months and died of causes related to old age.
Kawakami, who shunned publicity despite his business success, took over his father’s 19th century musical instrument company, Nippon Gakki Co., in 1950. At the time, piano and organ production had barely resumed in a small corrugated steel building, which replaced factories reduced to rubble by American bombing in 1945.
Within three decades, Kawakami had expanded the operation from a piano company employing 700 and unknown outside Japan to a worldwide conglomerate with 14,000 employees and a reputation for quality and value.
A visit to America and Europe in 1953 convinced Kawakami that the recreational market would rebound from the wartime devastation and would have a bright future in Japan. He countered the waning interest in musical instruments by opening a chain of franchised music schools for Japan’s nascent middle class. The Yamaha Music School now has 7,500 branches in 40 countries.
As he worked to increase the quality of pianos to attract foreign buyers, Kawakami also became a master of diversification. He added wind and stringed instruments and also developed Japan’s first electric organ, the Electone.
The incongruous leap to motorbike production sprang from Yamaha’s manufacturing of wood and metal airplane propellers in World War II. The equipment fell idle after the war, but, under Kawakami’s leadership, the company adapted the machinery to produce Yamaha’s first motorbike, the YA-1, nicknamed aka tombo, or red dragonfly.
Spun off as Yamaha Motor Co. in 1955, the motorbike manufacturing firm entered an overcrowded Japanese market from two single-story wooden factory buildings with a capacity to turn out 200 motorcycles a month. Subsequent success in international motorbike races brought recognition to the Yamaha bike brand. It is now the world’s second-largest manufacturer of motorbikes, after Honda.
Yamaha Motor also manufactures boats, outboard motors, snowmobiles and golf carts, as well as industrial machinery.
At the same time Kawakami was developing and expanding the motor company, he also diversified the former Nippon Gakki--often guided by his own tastes. He liked archery, so he manufactured bows and arrows. Woodworking skills acquired in making pianos were channeled into making furniture.
His continuing interest in music led him not only to write several books on the subject, but also to adapt wood and metallurgy manufacturing to include flutes and other woodwind instruments, horns endorsed by the Vienna Philharmonic and stereo equipment, and to virtually create the electronic musical instrument business.
“Music is the most wonderful of art forms,” Kawakami told Music Trades magazines in 1991. “It cuts across all barriers of race and nationality and humanizes us. I have made many mistakes and had many disappointments, but knowing that my labors have been in the service of music gives me a great deal of pride and contentment.”
The trade publication credited Kawakami with making Yamaha the largest musical instrument manufacturer in the world and the only company successful in sales of the full range of musical instruments.
A graduate of a trade school, Kawakami joined his father’s company in 1937, served as president from 1950 to 1976 and again from 1980 to 1983, and was chairman from 1977 until his retirement in 1992. He remained a key advisor to the two related companies, Yamaha Corp. and Yamaha Motor Co., until his death.
He is survived by his wife, Tamiko; a son; and a daughter. A private family funeral is planned in Kawakami’s hometown of Hamakita near Hamamatsu, about 145 miles west of Tokyo.
