Catnap 

Other than Fuji, Centurion and Miyata both imported high-end Japanese bikes into the USA. The coffee table book “Japanese Steel” that came out a few years ago does a great job of cataloging and detailing top of the line Japanese imports of the 70s - 90s.

it’s ironic to me that in Japan at that time, there were many extremely talented builders making handmade custom frames for the domestic market. For the most part these were never imported into the USA. Notable exceptions were 3Rensho and Zunow. Other luminaries like Nagasawa, Kalavinka (Tanabe), and Vivalo (Kusaka) only became known and respected in the USA in the 2000s when keirin bikes became popular stateside as part of the fixie revival.

Beyond these familiar names, there’s dozens of other Japanese builders who did outstanding work, as good or better than anything coming out of Italy. Sadly they are generally unknown in the States or only appreciated in niche circles. Nowadays many of these builders have either retired, passed away, or are in their last years.

I think the appreciation for European bikes led shops around the USA to import handmade frames from Italy and France, but overlooked the Japanese handmade market because they just weren’t going to appeal to American cyclists like the European brands did. Also, the language barrier probably didn’t help.