Last Updated on June 30, 2022 by FAB Jim The Cyclist
Shogun is another really cool vintage bicycle brand that started in Japan. Its history is a bit hard to find, but I believe the following to all be true.
Founded in 1977 and owned by Japanese trading company Marui. I believe they were all originally made in Japan by various manufacturers early on, and later in the 80’s switch to Taiwan like many other brands did. In the USA they started being distributed on the east coast out of New Jersey. Eventually that would change to New York and west coast distribution from Washington. I don’t believe they were very popular here in Wisconsin, but I do see them for sale now and then. I believe they stopped sale in the US around 1993. The brand name is now owned by Kent International and Shogun bikes can still be bought:
Here is a nice example of a vintage Shogun 600 road bike:
Most the bikes I see are road bikes like this with a number model number. I believe they started at 100 and went as high as 2001 with the better bikes having larger numbers. The 600 pictured is a pretty nice bike with Shimano 600 components, cro-mo frame, and Araya rims. They also had Ninja, Samurai, and Katana model road bikes. The mountain bike models that I have heard of are the Ground Breaker, Trail Breaker, and Prairie Breaker.
Are Shogun bikes good?
Vintage Shogun definitely made some good bikes. Some of them are entry level bikes and others are high quality. For example, the 600 pictured above was a good road bike for the time. Modern Shogun bikes seems to be mostly entry level.
They score a lot of points with me because of the really cool head badges they used early on. I’ll try to post more images and info as I find them.
Interesting post!
Thank you
A very nice looking bike! Is it yours?
Yes it is, not mine.