Gibson strikes chord in Japan

TOKYO — The hand-aged Gibson Les Paul Special is a replica of the 1960 original, but an American master craftsman made it exactly the way the guitar would look today, complete with aging cracked paint and tiny dents from scuffs and scratches.

What’s more unique, the instrument isn’t sold anywhere else but in guitar-loving Japan, where the entire limited edition of the electric guitars are sold out, underlining this nation’s never-ending affair with American guitars.

Never mind that Japan has its own respected guitar brands, including Yamaha and Ibanez. No Japan-made guitar has the ring of an American icon, and Gibson Guitar Corp.’s biggest competitor here may be another American company famous for electric guitars, Fender Musical Instruments Corp.

Nobuaki Suzuki, an editor at Guitar Magazine, a major Japanese publication, says more Gibson and Fender electric guitars sell here in numbers — not just in revenue — than Japan-made guitars.

“The Americans dominate in numbers,” he said.

Although Gibson is making marketing pushes elsewhere where demand is expected to grow, such as China, Japan is still Gibson’s biggest market outside the United States and twice as large as its biggest European market, Great Britain, although the Nashville-based producer of electric and acoustic guitars isn’t disclosing numbers.

Gibson makes a range of guitars solely for the Japanese market, including rocker Tak Matsumoto’s signature Les Paul in special guitar shades like canary yellow and sunburst.

“It is so cool,” says Yuki Yamaguchi, a 19-year-old student who bought a $5,400 Tak Matsumoto Gibson on three-month credit. “I open the case and look at it and go: ‘It is so cool.’ “

Amateur musicians like Yamaguchi, who acknowledges he hardly has time to play his guitar and spends more time admiring it, may be just buying a dream.

But they make for serious business.

Gibson is among the huge successes among American exports, which have over the years met mixed results in the finicky Japanese market. U.S.-made cars and rice have failed miserably while Levi’s jeans, Disneyland and iPods are hits.

In fact, Gibson does better in Japan against Japanese brands than it fares against those same competitors in the U.S., says Gibson chief executive Henry Juszkiewicz.

“The guitar itself is an art form very strongly associated with the U.S. The music that’s played on the guitar is very strongly associated with the U.S.,” he said in a telephone interview from Beijing, where he was on a recent business trip.

“Foreign markets tend to revere our brand much more so than the domestic market where we might be considered just another guitar.

“We’re very successful in the U.S., but there’s less reverence,” Juszkiewicz said.

Some of the biggest fans of Gibson guitars are the baby boomer generation, who grew up on 1970s music and now have the money to splurge on guitars, says Thom Fowle, a Gibson sales executive.

“Some of these consumers own five, 10, 20 guitars because they’re collecting. They’re collecting for the love of collecting,” he said during a recent visit in Tokyo.

Gibson has built its fame on custom-made guitars, replicas like the one of Jimi Hendrix’s V-shaped guitar decorated with psychedelic paint, and so-called signature guitars tailored for musicians, which get snatched up by their fans.

The real musicians who have yet to strike fame have more problems coming up with the money to buy expensive guitars.

Yosuke Onuma, a jazz musician who often plays Gibson guitars, won his first Gibson in a guitar contest. Onuma, 31, believes the Gibson image among Japanese has reached legendary status. After all, guitarists he respects, including Wes Montgomery, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, all played Gibson guitars at some point.

“Gibson guitars deliver a sweet, deep sound. You’re playing steel strings, but there’s that sound of wood — something that only Gibson has,” said Onuma. “It’s an earthy sound, very organic.”

Will Jones, who promotes Epiphone, Gibson’s more affordable lineup, says owning a Gibson is an opportunity to be part of the roots of rock because groups like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin played Gibsons.

Paul designed one of the first solid-body electric guitars and worked with Gibson to bring out the first Les Paul model in 1952. When he’d been injured in a car accident, he had the surgeon set his shattered arm at an angle so he’d still be able to cradle and play the guitar.

“Other brands don’t have that kind of history,” Jones said. “We are living, breathing rock ‘n’ roll history.”