Hoshino

Hoshino Gakki
Hoshino Gakki (company) was founded in 1908 by Matsujiro Hoshino originally as the Hoshino Shoten bookstore which mostly sold books and sheet music.

Hoshino added imported musical instruments to the stock over the years, including in 1929 becoming the Japanese distributor for Salvador Ibáñez. After the Ibáñez workshop was destroyed in the Spanish Civil War in 1935, Hoshino brought the name and went it to local production of musical instruments using it, (but without the accents), and the Ibanez brand was formed. However until the post war occupation and the boom of Japanese made instrument this was almost entirely a local brand and the fist Ibanez factory was destroyed by American bombing during WWII.

After the war Junpei Hoshino, (Yoshitaro's son), started up making musical instruments again in Nagoya and in 1957 the first electric Guitars were made. In 1962 the Tama Seisakusho factory was opened to manufacture electric Guitars and amplifiers. Also at some time in the 50's Hoshino took over Star Instruments, ostensibly for their Drum manufacture but Star Instruments also produced Chordophones, including Ukuleles, and these too become part of the Hoshino Catalogue, (though still at this time branded Star). Alternatively it may be that Hoshino always owned Star Instrument, (I have seen conflicting source material?)

Star branded Soprano and Baritone Ukuleles appear in all of the catalogues on the Hoshino/Ibanez website for the 60's (though they only show them up to 1965). Ukuleles are not in any of the catalogues for 1971 and they don't appear again until 2010. The Star branding has also gone in the 1971 catalogues and that never comes back. They have started to use Tama to brand acoustic guitars by this time though.

In 1966 they officially start to sub-contract the manufacture of Chordophones, (I believe initially to Guyatone and later to Fujigen Gakki I also suspect that it might have started earlier than 1966 too?), and from this point on it is very unclear as to what if any Chordophones they make and what they just brand, (they do continue to make Drums at the Tama factory though)?

During the time Hoshino Gakki, (and Star if it was ever separate), were making Chordophones, they were also making them OEM for others to brand. Brands they produced include Cimar, Continental, Crest, Goldentone, Howard, Jamboree, Jason, King's Stone, Maxitone, Penco, Pirles, Royal Polynesian, Starfield, Tulio and Zim Gar plus possibly Canora, Maxwell, and Pearl. This may not be all the brands they made, I haven't seen all of these names on Ukuleles and they may not have been the only firm doing the OEM?

In the late 2000's, (2010 according to the catalogues), They reintroduced Soprano and Concert Ukuleles, but now branded as Ibanez. They also introduced a number of Concert scale Ukuleles in their EW (Exotic Wood) range in a variety of, (laminate), woods plus they have done a couple of limited edition, (of 500), models based on the body shape of a couple of their famous guitars; the Talman and the Iceman, again laminate and again Concert scale. In the beginning some of the Ukulele models were made in Indonesia but now all production has moved to China, (except for the Japanese made specials)..

In 2014 Hoshino Gakki introduced some solid top Ukuleles to the Ibanez catalogue, along with adding Tenors to the EW range and having a deluxe EW made in Japan. In 2016 a Guitalele they called the Piccolo Guitar was introduced to the EW range. In 2022 they did another run of Iceman Ukuleles but this time they too were Tenorscale. 2023 has seen this iteration of the Iceman Ukulele end, to be replaced with a hollow bodied Tenor scale electric Iceman along with an RG body shaped Ukulele that have no sound hole and only a small sound port on the side.