2024 Sakurai-Kohno "Professional-J 630" CD/AR

This 2024 Sakurai-Kohno “Professional-J” is a classical guitar with a cedar top and African rosewood back and sides, made in Tokyo, Japan – with a compact 630mm string length.

A Kohno Design from the Sakurai Workshop

The “Professional-J” is a Masaru Kohno design that his nephew Masaki Sakurai went on building in the workshop as Sakurai-Kohno – a first-rate concert guitar. Among those who have played them are Oscar Ghiglia, Eduardo Fernández and Shin-ichi Fukuda – and, earlier, Sharon Isbin and Julian Bream.

Sound and Playability

This one is built with African rosewood for the back and sides instead of the jacarandá (CSA rosewood) that gives the model its “J”. The top is Canadian red cedar, perfectly quarter-sawn with plenty of silk – the cedar version of the well-known spruce model. With cedar, the well-known Kohno sound gains extra harmonic warmth. Playability is excellent, and the tone is lovely, with very, very good volume.

The Label

This guitar is built with a 630mm string length and a 50mm nut, for the player with smaller hands or any player looking for more compact dimensions; the scale is not on the label. Masaki Sakurai signed the “Sakurai Kohno Luthier” label, which names the model, “Professional-J”, and the year 2024. Performing musicians and recording artists alike will be well served by it.

Read and Watch More

Watch Masaki Sakurai at work in the documentary above, and hear Shin-ichi Fukuda play Bach on one of his guitars in “The Luthier and the Guitarist”. For more on Japanese guitar making, see Orfeo No. 15, “The Guitar in Japan”: it can be read online and is included in the print edition “Orfeo Magazine, 11-15”.

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”.