Koichi Kawai
1927–1955The Founder’s Craft
Built Japan’s first piano action in 1907 and founded Kawai in 1927. An inventor who never left the workbench, he set the standard the company still measures itself by.
KAWAI
Est. 1927 · Hamamatsu, Japan
Kawai began not in a boardroom but at a workbench — with a craftsman who had helped build Japan’s very first piano. This is the story of how one apprentice’s obsession with the instrument became a company carried across four generations, and one of the most celebrated names in piano making in the world.
Before there was a company called Kawai, there was a boy from Hamamatsu with an unusual gift for machines that make music.
Koichi Kawai was born in Hamamatsu in 1886, at the very moment Japan was learning to build the Western instruments it had long imported. As a young man he apprenticed under Torakusu Yamaha, the pioneer of Japanese instrument manufacturing, and joined the team that assembled Japan’s first domestically produced piano. It was rare, exacting work, and Koichi proved to be one of its most inventive minds.
His defining breakthrough came in 1907, when he completed the first entirely Japanese-made piano action — the intricate mechanism of levers, hammers and springs that translates a pianist’s touch into sound. Until then, Japanese piano makers had depended on imported actions. Koichi’s achievement freed a nation’s piano industry from that reliance and marked him, still in his early twenties, as a genuine pioneer of the craft.
For nearly two decades he remained at the heart of early Japanese piano development, refining the mechanism he had helped invent. But a restless conviction was forming: that he could build a better piano his own way, answerable to no standard but his own.
Yes. Kawai’s founder, Koichi Kawai, apprenticed under Torakusu Yamaha and was part of the team that built Japan’s first piano. The two great names of Japanese piano making share a single origin story — a workshop in Hamamatsu where an entire industry was being invented. Koichi went on to found his own company, Kawai, in 1927.
With seven fellow craftsmen and a single ambition — to build the finest pianos in the world — Koichi Kawai set out on his own.
In 1927, in Hamamatsu, Koichi Kawai founded the Kawai Musical Instrument Research Laboratory — later incorporated as Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Co., Ltd. He began not with a factory but with a laboratory, a word chosen deliberately: from the first day, Kawai defined itself as a company of inquiry as much as manufacture, forever asking how the piano might be made better.
The seven craftsmen who joined him were master builders in their own right, and the young enterprise placed research and hands-on artistry side by side. Koichi himself never left the bench. It is said he personally inspected every completed instrument, and would sit and play a phrase only once a piano had met his uncompromising standard — a ritual that told the workshop the piano was worthy of the Kawai name.
That founding spirit — craft disciplined by curiosity — became the through-line of everything the company would build over the next century. Kawai’s recognition was not long in coming: in 1953 the Japanese government awarded Koichi the Medal with Blue Ribbon, the first such honour given to anyone in the musical instrument industry.
From the first day, Kawai defined itself as a company of inquiry as much as manufacture.
Kawai was founded in 1927 and is one of Japan’s oldest and most storied piano makers — though not the first Japanese company to make pianos. What sets its heritage apart is its founder: Koichi Kawai helped build Japan’s very first piano two decades earlier, in the workshop of Torakusu Yamaha, and in 1907 completed the first entirely Japanese-made piano action. Few piano companies can trace their lineage so directly to the origin of an entire nation’s instrument.
The history of Kawai and Yamaha is intertwined at the root. Both trace back to the same Hamamatsu workshop where Japan’s piano industry was born, and to the same founding generation of craftsmen. Kawai’s distinction is its unbroken family stewardship — four generations of the Kawai family have led the company — and an engineering culture that repeatedly reinvented the piano action, the instrument’s most critical moving part.
When Koichi died in 1955, his son Shigeru Kawai inherited both a company and a question: how do you honour a craft while carrying it into the modern age?
Shigeru Kawai became president in 1955 and brought a scientific, systematic mind to his father’s artisan legacy. Where Koichi had built by feel and instinct, Shigeru added measurement, materials research and manufacturing discipline — never replacing the craft, but giving it a rigorous foundation on which to grow.
Under his leadership Kawai reached beyond Japan. In 1963 the company established Kawai America Corporation in Los Angeles, one of its first international subsidiaries, opening the United States to Kawai instruments. Production scaled to meet the world: Kawai built its one-millionth piano in 1978 and its two-millionth by 1990.
This era also produced two of Kawai’s most consequential decisions. In 1971 the company pioneered the use of ABS composite parts in the piano action — a material more stable than wood, immune to the swelling and shrinking that humidity inflicts on traditional mechanisms. And in 1980 Kawai opened the Ryuyo Grand Piano Facility near Hamamatsu, a plant conceived as a marriage of hand craftsmanship and advanced technology, and still the home of its finest grand pianos.
Shigeru’s own name would ultimately grace the company’s pinnacle instruments. In 1999, after nearly half a century at the helm, he lent his name to the Shigeru Kawai series of luxury grand pianos — hand-built by a small circle of master artisans and voiced to the concert stage.
In 1989 the founder’s grandson, Hirotaka Kawai, became president — and set out to prove that automation and artistry could serve the same instrument.
Hirotaka Kawai introduced robotics and precision automation into Kawai’s factories, applying machines to the tasks where consistency matters most while reserving for human hands the work that only a trained ear and touch can judge. It was the third generation’s answer to the founder’s question: technology in service of craft, not in place of it.
That philosophy reached its clearest expression in 2002 with the launch of the Millennium III action, an evolution of the composite mechanism Kawai had pioneered three decades earlier. By infusing its action components with carbon fibre, Kawai produced parts markedly lighter, stronger and faster than wood — enabling quicker repetition and a more responsive touch, while remaining impervious to the humidity that has plagued piano actions for two centuries.
The result is a company that carries its founder’s bench-craft into an age of carbon fibre and robotics without losing the thread that connects them — a continuity of purpose spanning four generations of the Kawai family.
Technology in service of craft, not in place of it.
Nearly a century after a craftsman built Japan’s first piano action, Kawai instruments are chosen on the world’s great stages and in homes across every continent.
Today Kawai stands among the most decorated names in piano making — with more than 61 international competition victories, over 50 major industry awards, and more than 2.4 million pianos built since 1927. Its instruments span the full arc of the art, from digital and hybrid pianos to the hand-built Shigeru Kawai concert grands that carry the founder’s name.
In 2024, following the passing of Hirotaka Kawai, Kentaro Kawai became the company’s fourth president — taking the helm three years before Kawai’s centennial in 2027, and carrying its founding conviction into a second century.
What has never changed is the conviction Koichi Kawai carried to his workbench in 1907: that a piano is worth building only if it is built better than it has ever been built before. Four generations later, that standard is still the one every Kawai instrument is measured against.
From a founder at the workbench to a grandson at the intersection of craft and robotics, the same conviction has passed from hand to hand — that a piano is worth building only if it is built better than before.
The Founder’s Craft
Built Japan’s first piano action in 1907 and founded Kawai in 1927. An inventor who never left the workbench, he set the standard the company still measures itself by.
The Scientific Approach
Brought materials research and manufacturing discipline to his father’s craft, pioneered the ABS composite action, and took Kawai global — lending his own name to the company’s finest grand pianos.
Craft Meets Robotics
Married precision robotics to hand craftsmanship and launched the carbon-fibre Millennium III action — proving that technology and artistry could serve the same instrument. Led Kawai for thirty-five years, until his passing in 2024.
The Next Century
Kawai’s fourth president, who took the helm in 2024 — three years before the company’s centennial — with a renewed philosophy, “Let your life resound,” and an ambition to lead piano-making into its second century.
The dated arc of Kawai — from the founder’s birth to a global piano maker celebrated on the world’s great stages.
Koichi Kawai is born in Hamamatsu, Japan — soon to become the country’s "City of Music."
Apprenticing under Torakusu Yamaha, Koichi completes the first entirely Japanese-made piano action.
Koichi founds the Kawai Musical Instrument Research Laboratory in Hamamatsu with seven fellow craftsmen.
Koichi becomes the first person in the musical instrument industry to receive the honour.
Shigeru Kawai succeeds his father as president, bringing a scientific approach to the family craft.
Kawai America Corporation is established in Los Angeles, one of the company’s first international subsidiaries.
Kawai pioneers ABS composite parts in the piano action — more stable than wood, immune to humidity.
Total piano production reaches one million instruments.
Kawai opens its world-class grand piano plant near Hamamatsu — hand craftsmanship married to advanced technology.
Hirotaka Kawai, the founder’s grandson, becomes president and introduces robotics alongside craft.
The Shigeru Kawai series of luxury, hand-built concert grand pianos is launched.
Carbon-fibre-infused action components deliver faster repetition and greater strength than wood.
Following the passing of Hirotaka Kawai, Kentaro Kawai becomes the fourth president of Kawai — leading toward the company’s centennial in 2027.
61+ international competition victories, 50+ major awards, and 2.4M+ pianos built across four generations.
Koichi Kawai’s personal story — from a boy in Hamamatsu to the inventor of Japan’s first piano action.
How a Kawai piano is made — the materials, the artistry and the exacting standards behind every instrument.
From the ABS composite action to the carbon-fibre Millennium III — the engineering that defines a Kawai.
Every Kawai instrument carries a century of craft — from Koichi Kawai’s first piano action to the concert grands built today. Explore the range, or meet the founder whose obsession started it all.