2025 Sakurai-Kohno "Professional-J" CD/AR

This 2025 Sakurai-Kohno “Professional-J” is a classical guitar with a cedar top and African rosewood back and sides, made in Tokyo, Japan – from 2025, with African rosewood back and sides.

Kohno’s Design, Sakurai’s Workshop

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. Oscar Ghiglia, Eduardo Fernández, Shin-ichi Fukuda, Sharon Isbin and Julian Bream are among the players who have used these guitars.

Materials and Sound

Although the “J” of the model name refers to jacarandá, this guitar has back and sides of African rosewood – a beautiful set. 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 top lends extra harmonic warmth to the charming Kohno sound. Excellent to play, it has a lovely tone and very good volume.

Label

The guitar comes with its hardshell case. The 2025 label, “Sakurai Kohno Luthier – Kohno Guitar Manufacturing, Tokyo Japan”, names the “Professional-J” and carries Sakurai’s signature. We can recommend it to anyone – the performing musician and the recording artist included.

More to Watch and Read

The first video above is a documentary about Masaki Sakurai; in the second, “The Luthier and the Guitarist”, Shin-ichi Fukuda plays Bach on a Sakurai guitar. Orfeo Magazine devoted its issue No. 15 to the guitar in Japan. You can read it online, and it is also part of the print edition “Orfeo Magazine, 11-15”, available at GSI.

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”.