In my experience, the first Japanese bikes that got respect from the racing crowd was 3rensho, and that was only on the track at first. By that time, Gibby Hatton and others had done kerin racing in Japan and were riding 3renshos. If they were good enough for the likes of them, they were fine for the rest of us. And with the yen dollar exchange rate at the time, they were a bargain vs the European or even American frames. But they never had the distribution that the European frames had or the local loyalty that American builders had.