A wire counter that never left the district.

Oyaide began as a wire seller in Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics district, in October 1952. The company’s own history says its founder, Kazuji Oyaide, opened for business in a space of about one and a half tsubo — roughly five square metres — on Chuo-dori, on the corner where Bic Camera AKIBA now stands. His first stock was magnet wire for motors and transformers and insulating material, sold by the length. The legal company, Oyaide Denki Shokai (小柳出電気商会), was incorporated in April 1971; abroad it trades as Oyaide Electric.

In 1956, the company says, the shop moved beneath the viaduct of the JR Sobu line, where its Akihabara store still trades today, in Sotokanda. During Japan’s boom years it also sold televisions, refrigerators and washing machines, but in 1974 it gave up household appliances to concentrate on the wholesale and retail of wire, under the motto “what you need, as much as you need.” In 1989 the head office moved to a new building in Yushima, in neighbouring Bunkyo ward.

Audio came through a customer. In the 1970s, the company says, the audio critic Saburo Egawa visited the shop, took up a litz wire the founder recommended, and argued that cable could change the sound. That led to Oyaide’s first speaker cable, the OR-800, in April 1980, and — after a four-core power cable, the L/i50 — to its first power distribution box, the OCB-1, which went on sale at the Akihabara shop in January 1985, according to its Japanese anniversary history. The company’s English history puts the two products the other way round, so we follow the dated Japanese account.

Cables, plugs and a conductor of its own.

Oyaide still describes two businesses: the wholesale and retail of wire, cable and connectors, and the planning, manufacture, sale and OEM supply of audio cables and connectors. Its English history credits Satoru Murayama, who it says became president in 2000, with developing audio products “in earnest” and with arranging “strategic partnerships with manufacturers and subcontractors.” The range now runs from power cables such as the L/i50 and TUNAMI lines to MTB power strips, wall outlets — its SWO series, it says, dates from 2002 — and audio plugs. In 2008 it added NEO, a professional brand for DJs, studio engineers and musicians.

It has also imported other makers’ products. Phile-web reported in March 2009 that Oyaide would become the Japanese distributor of FiiO, the Chinese headphone-amplifier maker, from that April, and that until then its goods had been sold only through its own shop and online store. AV Watch reported in January 2018 that the distributor Emirai would take over all FiiO business from 1 February that year.

The company’s defining step came from a supplier’s exit. Furukawa Electric, which had developed the PCOCC copper conductor used by Oyaide, Audio-Technica and other cable makers, stopped making it in August 2013, according to Japanese Wikipedia, citing SankeiBiz and Phile-web. Oyaide’s answer was a conductor of its own, 102 SSC, announced in September 2014, AV Watch reported; the company’s own pages give June and September. AV Watch, in a December 2014 feature produced with Oyaide’s cooperation, said Oyaide planned the conductor and that Sanshu Densen, a wire-drawing company in Aichi Prefecture, carried out the processing. The name, the company says, comes from a conductivity of 102.3% IACS and “Special Surface Copper”; it says the conductor uses virgin copper refined in Japan, natural diamond dies and Sanshu’s patented stranding of three different strand diameters. The first cables to use it included TUNAMI V2 and EXPLORER V2, and the OCB-1 SX V2 power strip.

Valves and wire.

Japan’s audio industry is best known for its large electronics groups, but much of its valve-amplifier and cable trade belongs to small specialist companies. The seven in this guide are all based in or around Tokyo, according to the addresses on their own websites.

Three are valve-amplifier makers. Shindo Laboratory lists its address in Hongo, in Tokyo’s Bunkyo ward. Audio Note, the Japanese company behind the Kondo name, says it was founded in 1976 and has worked with silver since then; it is based in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. Triode, set up in 1994 as Triode Supply Japan, is based in Koshigaya, Saitama; it says it designs its products itself and has them built by partner factories in China, and that its TRV-CD6SE CD player of 2020 was its first product made in Japan.

Two more make a wider mix of equipment. Fidelix, in Kiyose, western Tokyo, gives its founding year as 1976. Kripton, whose range runs from loudspeakers to cables and power accessories, lists its address in Yotsuya, Shinjuku.

The last two are cable and connector specialists. Furutech says it was established in April 1988 and designs and manufactures cables, connectors and power products from Togoshi, Shinagawa. Oyaide Electric began as an Akihabara wire seller in 1952, still runs a shop beneath the JR Sobu line, and has its head office in Yushima, Bunkyo.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

“The Japanese State of the Art” — its own phrase.

Oyaide is a private company. Its profile gives its head office as Yushima in Bunkyo, Tokyo, its capital as ¥10 million and its president as Naoko Murayama; we found no acquisition or outside owner in the sources we checked. AV Watch named Satoru Murayama as president in December 2014, and the sources we checked do not say when that changed.

On where its products are made, Oyaide’s English website says that “all Oyaide products are made with materials that are processed exclusively in Japan” and that its materials are “obtained solely in Japan”; we give those as its claims. The documented part is narrower: AV Watch described the 102 SSC conductor being drawn and stranded in Japan, at a domestic copper-drawing company and at Sanshu Densen in Aichi. None of the company pages we checked says where cables and connectors are finally assembled, and the product pages we read carry no country-of-origin line. The company says it exports to more than 50 countries.

Its design shows most in its connectors and power products. The company says the FOCUS 1 XLR plug took a year to develop, has a body inspired by a camera lens, and marks left and right with blue and red Swarovski rhinestones. Its MTB II power strips use a 2 mm brass enclosure in an all-black matte finish, and it says outlet contacts are buffed by hand before plating. Oyaide calls its products “The Japanese State of the Art”; it publishes no logo typeface or brand colours.

For a design guide, Oyaide shows how a shop counter can grow into a brand without leaving its street. Compare Furutech, another Tokyo maker of cables and connectors, and Audio-Technica, which also used Furukawa’s PCOCC conductor. For this guide we use copper, black and a rhodium silver with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Oyaide’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.