Originally Posted by
The Golden Boy
For whatever it's worth, my father was Asian.
I just found out this year, before my father's funeral, that people that were well-meaning friends and neighbors of my maternal grandparents were apologizing to them for their daughter marrying an Asian.
Why didn't Japanese stuff have cachet? Because of ****ed up attitudes like that.
No, it had very little to do with attitudes and more like history. European and American builders had many years and even generations of frame-building under their belt at the highest level of competition, more so the Europeans and especially the Italians. When we think of Asian builders, we are talking about the Japanese. Name one stage race in Japan that is on the same level as any of the big races in Europe. The old adage of race on Sunday, sell on Monday for cars played out to a smaller degree with bicycles. The Japanese frame builders were more focused on track, specifically Keirin racing until they started to penetrate the pelotons of European stage racing. The majority of people buying bikes were buying bikes that were similar to those for stage racing, not track. The influence of the Japanese builders really were specialized in something that the western buying public really had no interest in, and still generally don’t. Also, the main area of Japanese expertise lay in an area where the US and Europe again had many years of experience in as well, track or board racing. My grandfather in the early 1900s was a track cyclist in the Chicago area and there were tons of local builders back then. The Japanese really did not get started in bicycle racing until after the war ended and then only nationally, not international. It took decades for them to get a foothold in the west but one they did, they still really weren’t on the same level as the others and mainly were low to mid level for many years after. It wasn’t until the late 70s and early 80s that they really to started to send bikes of the same level or even better to the west but that period was short lived before the whole house of cards came tumbling down due to the valuation of the Dollar to the Yen.