This article is a book review of an autobiography of Ikutaro Kakehashi, published in 2002 and titled “I Believe in Music.” Kakehashi-san founded the electronic music powerhouse Roland, and this review was triggered by an article I read about the user-programmable Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, an automatic electronic drum machine. Kakehashi’s autobiography details the life of a man who dedicated his life to music, electronics, and entrepreneurship. I found the book to be an amazing story involving the rise of Japan from the bitter ashes of World War II to an economic and electronics powerhouse in the latter half of the 20th century, the birth of electronic music, and how dedication to a vision can lead you to greater and greater success while occasionally dashing you to the rocks.
If you’re not a musician (I’m not), you may not be familiar with the TR-808. It was an analog/digital hybrid drum synthesizer introduced in 1980. It sold for $1195 and was manufactured for just two years. The Roland TR-808 was not especially successful – initially – due to its high retail price, yet it played a foundational role in the development of Hip Hop music, and it has developed a following decades after it was discontinued. Today, you might be asked to spend as much as $10,000 for a used TR-808 in good condition. They’re that popular, and because of their short manufacturing run, they’re relatively rare. Roland made only 12,000 TR-808s. In future articles, I’ll be discussing more TR-808 technical details, how it synthesized its unique drum sounds, and why the Hip Hop community adopted this limited-run drum machine. However, I’m devoting this first article in the series to the man who started Roland.
The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was an early automated drum machine. Introduced in 1980, it had limited commercial success, until the Hip Hop community rediscovered it. Image credit: Roland
Kakehashi’s autobiography opens during World War II in Imperial Japan. Kakehashi was 10 years old when the war started, and he was 15 when it ended. Japan’s resources were depleted by the war. There were very few jobs and little to eat. Kakehashi had been orphaned at the age of 2 and lived with his grandparents in Osaka before and during the war. After taking a few jobs, Kakehashi apprenticed himself to the owner of a clock and watch repair shop in Kyushu. Because Japan could not afford to bring in new clocks and watches, repairing old timepieces was a big business. After a few months of training in clock repair, Kakehashi asked to learn about watch repair. The business owner exploded at Kakehashi’s impudence. Apprenticeships lasted seven years, and watch repair training was years in Kakehashi’s future, according to traditional apprenticeship rules.
At that point, Kakehashi’s entrepreneurial streak and take-charge attitude surfaced. He quit his apprenticeship, ordered a book on watch repair, learned what he needed to know, and opened his own repair shop. His repair business flourished, even though three other clock and watch repair shops were already serving the small town of 12,000 people. During this period, Kakehashi’s love of music drove him to learn about and to construct a radio receiver. He also started repairing radios for people in town and learned some repair tricks, such as holding a vacuum tube over a candle flame to reactivate the getter plated on the inside of the glass, which would increase the tube’s internal vacuum. His income grew as he became increasingly skilled in his clock, watch, and radio repairs.
Four years later, when food became more plentiful and travel restrictions within Japan eased, Kakehashi moved to Osaka, where he planned to use the savings from his business to start working on a university degree. However, fate intervened. Kakehashi had contracted tuberculosis during the lean years and he was forced to use his savings to survive while being treated at Sengokuso Sanitarium. He supplemented his savings by repairing watches, clocks, and radios while residing at the sanitarium. Kakehashi’s disease progressed and nearly killed him, but fate intervened once again. He became the first patient at Sengokuso to be given streptomycin, serving as an experimental guinea pig, and his fortunes turned about nearly overnight.
During his stay at Sengokuso, Kakehashi learned about a recent electronic invention: television. He ordered parts and built his own TV receiver so that he could listen to NHK’s intermittent television programming. Kakehashi had been prevented from entering a university due to his illness, but he started referring to his four-year stay in the sanitarium as graduating from the Electronics Department of Sengokuso University, with a specialty in music.
As soon as he was well, Kakehashi married his fiancée, Masako Kondo, opened an electrical appliance store in Osaka, and named it “Kakehashi Musen” (Kakehashi Radio Shop). Over the next two decades, he grew Kakehashi Musen from a small radio and electrical appliance retailer into a major retailer named Ace Electrical Co Ltd. With significant revenue coming in, Kakehashi then set his sights on becoming a manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, specifically electronic organs, by founding Ace Electronic Industries, Inc, which had been his ultimate plan all along. His company was too small to produce and sell its own electronic organ, so Ace’s first product design was sold by National-Panasonic (a Matsushita Electric brand) as the SX-601 electronic organ.
Because Ace was too small to compete directly with the big keyboard makers, including Yamaha and Kawai, Kakehashi elected to design supplemental musical instruments to accompany electronic organs and focused Ace’s design and manufacturing efforts on rhythm machines. Ace’s first big seller was the Rhythm Ace R-1, the first fully transistorized electronic percussion instrument with six buttons that reproduced six drum-like sounds. Kakehashi showed the Rhythm Ace R-1 at the 1964 NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) in Chicago. The Rhythm Ace R-1 was a manual percussion instrument, and the market wanted an automated instrument that could generate familiar music rhythms by itself, to serve as a virtual metronome for the organ player while providing musical accompaniment.
In his autobiography, Kakehashi writes:
“In Rhythm Ace, we developed a circuit that was called a diode matrix. It produced rows of pulses that would determine the sound-making position for each instrument [drum sound]. After a circuit was set and designed, it was extremely difficult to change it. In 1967, Ace Electronic managed to market the ‘Rhythm Ace FR-1,’ an automatic rhythm instrument. Immediately before putting it on the market, [the dance] Bossa Nova became popular, and I wanted to incorporate that rhythm into the new product. Answers to my questions about what was a proper Bossa Nova rhythm pattern differed from person to person. As time was running out, I made the last minute decision to insert the rhythm used in the popular tune, ‘Girl From Ipanema.’ I hate to think what the result would have been if we had chosen the wrong Bossa Nova pattern… the FR-1 was clearly a turning point for me and for the business.’”
The Rhythm Ace FR-1 was the first fully automatic drum machine from Ikutaro Kakehashi’s first manufacturing company, Ace Electronic Industries. It had sixteen built-in rhythms, which were read out from a diode matrix. Image credit: drumcollector.com
Because of the FR-1, Ace quickly established an OEM relationship with the Hammond Organ Company, the world’s largest maker of electronic organs at that time. Eventually, Ace would partner with Hammond to distribute Hammond’s instruments in Japan, operating a jointly held company named Hammond International. As a result of this and other relationships in the musical instrument industry, Ace Electronic grew throughout the 1960s. Like many small companies in general and musical instrument companies in particular, Ace was constantly limited in its ability to grow because it was always strapped for funds. Consequently, Kakehashi partnered with an investment and trading conglomerate named Sakata Shokai. Kazuo Sakata ran Sakata Shokai, and Kakehashi found him to be an easy partner to work with because he was a music aficionado with a good understanding of the organ business.
Ace prospered and grew for three years with periodic cash infusions from Sakata Shokai, but when Sumitomo Chemical acquired Sakata Shokai, Kakehashi discovered to his dismay that he’d lost control of his own company because he’d sold shares of his company’s stock over the years in exchange for investment capital. Sumitomo wasn’t really interested in owning a musical instrument maker, and its ownership of a majority interest in Ace Electric was merely the result of the Sakata Shokai acquisition. According to Kakehashi’s autobiography, Sumitomo’s managers understood little about the musical instrument business and cared even less. Their business was profit. Kakehashi found himself in frequent disagreement with Sumitomo.
When the managerial difficulties and pressures became too great due to Sumitomo’s lack of understanding of Ace’s businesses, Kakehashi’s entrepreneurial drive took over. He resigned and walked away from his first company. He immediately founded Roland Corporation so that he could once again control his own destiny. In his autobiography, Kakehashi wrote:
“By the time I realized that I no longer held ultimate management control of Ace Electronic, it was too late to salvage the situation. Nevertheless, that did not mean that I had ‘lost’ or that my ambitions were defeated. It was true that I no longer had a company, but I had acquired a world of experience, and that would be hidden capital for building Roland Corporation.
“With some regret but high hopes for the future, I left Ace Electronic and Hammond International in March 1972… The Roland Corporation was officially established on April 18, 1972 – one month after my departure from Ace and Hammond.”
The rest of the autobiographical book details how Roland became a major force in the musical instrument business, first as a pioneer in the development of drum and rhythm machines (based on Kakehashi’s Ace experience), and then with music synthesizers and a wide range of other electronic music products. Along the way, Roland co-developed the original MIDI interface protocol, the music industry’s standard communications bus, along with another electronic pioneer, Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits. As Roland Corporation grew, Kakehashi sensed that he was being drawn into the company’s management functions and away from the nitty gritty of product and circuit design. He resigned himself to the change, learned to savor it, and founded an international empire of Roland partnerships.
Ikutaro Kakehashi died in 2017, leaving behind a deep legacy in electronic music. His autobiography is devoted to the many relationships he developed along the way. It’s filled with the names of and anecdotes about the many people he met on his life’s journey. Even though this book is more than two decades old, it’s a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of music, electronics, and entrepreneurial drive. It’s at that intersection that Ikutaro Kakehashi’s spirit will forever stand, listening to and reveling in his beloved music, in all its infinite diversity.
The next article in this series will discuss the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, its history, and the off-spec electronic component that gave this instrument its unique sound.
