2012 Sakurai-Kohno "Professional-J" CD/CSAR

This 2012 Sakurai-Kohno “Professional-J” is a classical guitar with a cedar top and CSA rosewood back and sides, made in Tokyo, Japan, with a silky Canadian red cedar top.

The Sakurai-Kohno “Professional-J”

A first-rate concert guitar, the “Professional-J” is Masaru Kohno’s design, built in his Tokyo workshop under the direction of his nephew Masaki Sakurai. These instruments have been played by Oscar Ghiglia, Eduardo Fernández and Shin-ichi Fukuda, and in earlier years by top players such as Sharon Isbin and Julian Bream.

The Woods and the Sound

Its back and sides are of jacarandá (the “J” of the model name), CSA rosewood, and they are stunning. Here the top is Canadian red cedar – the cedar version of the better-known spruce model – perfectly quarter-sawn, with plenty of silk. The cedar adds extra harmonic warmth to the well-known Kohno sound. Playability is excellent, and the tone is lovely, with very, very good volume.

Label

On the label of the Kohno Guitar Manufacturing workshop: Sakurai Kohno, Model “Professional-J”, 2012, signed by Sakurai. We would recommend it to anyone, including a performing musician or recording artist.

Videos and Further Reading

Two films above show the workshop: a documentary on Masaki Sakurai, and “The Luthier and the Guitarist”, with Shin-ichi Fukuda playing Bach on a Sakurai guitar. The guitar makers of Japan are the subject of Orfeo Magazine No. 15 – read the issue online, or find it in the print edition that collects issues 11 to 15.

Orfeo No. 15: The Guitar in Japan

Orfeo Magazine, 11-15 (print edition)

Masaru Kohno (1926–1998)

Kohno, Sakurai & Kimishima are three generations of one Tokyo guitar-making family. Masaru Kohno – Japan’s most important classical guitar maker, and one of the best worldwide – was born in 1926 in Mito City. In 1960 he traveled to Spain and apprenticed for six months with Arcángel Fernández in Madrid; back in Tokyo he established his own workshop, and in 1967 he was awarded the Gold Medal at an international guitar-building competition in Belgium, judged among others by Ignacio Fleta, Robert Bouchet, Joaquín Rodrigo and Alirio Díaz. Julian Bream, Oscar Ghiglia and Sharon Isbin are among the many players of world renown who have used Kohno guitars.

Masaki Sakurai (1944–2025)

Born in Tokyo on May 10, 1944, Masaki Sakurai joined the workshop of his uncle, Masaru Kohno, in 1966. Among many other accomplishments, in 1988 he was awarded First Prize at the 4th International Guitar Making Competition in Paris, France. Mr. Kohno passed away in 1998, and the workshop was taken over by Sakurai, who carried on its legacy under the name Sakurai-Kohno. The guitars built since he took over have maintained the high levels of quality, precision craftsmanship, meticulous attention to detail and beauty of tone that have made Kohno guitars world renowned. Masaki Sakurai passed away in 2025 at the age of 81 (read our tribute).

So Kimishima (born 1983)

So Kimishima, Masaru Kohno’s grandson, studied at the Musashi Institute of Technology in Tokyo and joined the family workshop, where since 2007 he has worked and trained with his uncle, the great Masaki Sakurai. His guitars are based largely on the sound of Masaru Kohno’s guitars from the 1950s and 1960s, with design ideas and techniques learned from Sakurai, and he uses different bracing designs according to the tonewood of each top. In 2021 he announced his own model, the “Stella”, followed by his flagship “Sol” and its sister model “Luna”.