KAWAI
1947 — 2024
Third President of Kawai · 1989–2024
Hirotaka Kawai · 1947–2024 · Third President of Kawai — the leader who married robotics to handcraft, and carried a family workshop onto the world stage.
When Hirotaka Kawai became president in 1989, he inherited a company built by two exacting men — his grandfather Koichi, who had made Japan’s first piano action, and his father Shigeru, who had turned it into an art. What he added was a paradox that would define the next thirty-five years: he brought advanced robotics into the workshop, and used them to protect the work of human hands.
His conviction was simple. A machine should carry every burden a machine could carry perfectly — so that a trained ear and a practised touch could be spent only where they were irreplaceable. It was the longest tenure of any Kawai president, and under it the family workshop became a global manufacturer without ever ceasing to be a workshop.
He invested tens of millions to automate everything a machine could do perfectly — and reserved for people the work no machine could judge.
On taking the presidency in 1989, Hirotaka Kawai pledged to carry on the commitment to excellence of his father and grandfather. He kept that promise in an unexpected way. Rather than treat automation as a threat to craftsmanship, he treated it as its guardian — the means to remove human error from the tasks that only demanded consistency, and to concentrate human skill on the tasks that demanded a human.
Advanced robotics took on the repeatable, the measurable, the tirelessly precise. What stayed in human hands was everything a trained ear and a practised touch alone could settle: the final voicing, the regulation of an action, the listening that tells a maker when an instrument is finished. It was a philosophy of both/and, not either/or — and it let Kawai raise its scale and its standard at the same time.
The repeatable and the measurable — cut, formed and finished to a tolerance no hand could hold across thousands of instruments. Consistency, made absolute.
Voicing, regulation, the final listening — the judgements only a trained ear and a practised touch can make. Character, left to people.
The quest for perfection is not just an ideal, but a duty.A guiding statement of the Kawai workshop in his era
He was the first Kawai leader to move production outside Japan — and by 1990, Kawai had built its two-millionth piano.
Under Hirotaka Kawai, the company that had been born at a single Hamamatsu workbench became a manufacturer on several continents. In 1991 he established Kawai Asia Manufacturing in Malaysia — the first Kawai production ever sited outside Japan. Kawai Finishing followed in the United States in 1995, alongside Kawai America Manufacturing and the acquisition of the Lowrey Organ Company, and manufacturing later reached Indonesia.
Scale, for him, was never the point in itself; it was what allowed the standard to travel. The milestone that opened the decade said it plainly — by 1990 total Kawai piano production had reached two million instruments — but the achievement he cared about was that a piano built anywhere in the Kawai world was still built to one exacting idea of what a piano should be.
A workshop that became a company — without ever ceasing to be a workshop.
In 1999 he launched Kawai’s flagship luxury grand line and gave it his father’s name.
Some tributes are spoken. This one was built. In 1999, Hirotaka Kawai introduced a new line of hand-built concert and luxury grand pianos and named it Shigeru Kawai — after his father, the second-generation president under whom the modern Kawai grand had come of age. It made the family story audible: a son placing his father’s name on the finest instruments the company knew how to make.
The Shigeru Kawai line became the summit of the range and a fixture on the world’s concert stages — the clearest expression of the both/and philosophy, where the reach of modern manufacturing serves pianos still finished, voiced and judged entirely by hand.
In 2002, the ABS-Carbon action gave a new material to the oldest problem in the piano — and crowned a lineage begun in the 1960s.
The touch of a piano begins in its action — the mechanism that carries a pianist’s intention to the string. Kawai had pioneered composite actions since the late 1960s, and under Hirotaka Kawai that lineage reached its capstone: the Millennium III action of 2002, formed from an ABS-Carbon composite that was lighter, stronger and more stable than the wood it replaced. It let players move faster and more precisely, and it held its regulation where timber warps.
It was engineering in service of feel, not for its own sake. His tenure also saw the flagship RX Series artist grands refined into the improved RX-H line in 2008, and — during his leadership — Kawai advanced into hybrid instruments that joined a real acoustic action to digital sound. Each was the same instinct at work: let new means protect an old standard.
In 2010, Hirotaka Kawai was personally awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland — one of that nation’s highest honours. It recognised him not as a manufacturer but as a patron, tied to Kawai’s long support of the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.
For a piano maker, few tributes carry more meaning. It placed the third-generation head of a Hamamatsu workshop among the guardians of a musical tradition, and honoured a lifetime spent in service of the instrument he was raised beside.
From his appointment in 1989 to a tenure remembered in 2024 — the dated arc of the longest presidency in Kawai’s history.
Hirotaka Kawai became president; his father Shigeru became chairman. The commitment to excellence passed to a third generation.
Total Kawai piano production reached two million instruments.
Kawai Asia Manufacturing was established in Malaysia — the first Kawai production sited outside Japan.
Kawai Finishing opened in the United States, alongside Kawai America Manufacturing and the acquisition of the Lowrey Organ Company.
Kawai’s flagship luxury grand line launched, named in honour of his father, Shigeru Kawai.
The ABS-Carbon composite action arrived — the capstone of Kawai’s composite-action lineage.
Kawai marked its 80th anniversary and opened its first Kawai Music School in Shanghai.
Awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, tied to Kawai’s support of the Chopin Competition.
Appointed chairman while retaining the presidency — leading the company he had guided for a quarter century.
Kawai celebrated its 90th anniversary as a global piano maker.
Hirotaka Kawai died on 23 February 2024 while serving as chairman, president and CEO. Kentaro Kawai became the fourth president.
Hirotaka Kawai died on 23 February 2024, having led Kawai for thirty-five years — the longest presidency in the company’s history. In the same month, Kentaro Kawai became the fourth president, inheriting the both/and conviction that had guided his predecessor: that new means exist to protect an old standard, and that a piano is worth building only if it is built better than before.
Every Kawai grand carries the idea Hirotaka Kawai spent a lifetime refining — the precision of the machine, kept in service of the hand. Play one, and you play his legacy.
