ZUNOW

“In 2013, I had a conversation with Mr. Ooyama, who runs the last Zunow store. It’s located in Chiba, a suburb of Tokyo. Ooyama partnered with Kageyama in the early 1970s to cover the northern part of Japan, since Kageyama (and the Zunow factory) was located in Osaka, southern Japan.” “Ooyama confirmed that Zunow means “genius” and that is the intended translation… The logo itself went through at least two permutations: the classic version with a fleur-de-lis on the bottom, and later, a sort of abstract geometric version found on the “Hummingbird” series of bikes.” “…Early Zunow bikes (1965-1970s) were sometimes built with Nervex lugs… These bikes still have the distinctive Zunow hummingbird cast into the seat stay tops. By the late 1970s / early 1980s, Kageyama was having his own lugs made. Early versions often had a spade cut-out in the head lugs. Later, they became more ornate. (There have been) at least three iterations of the Zunow lugs sets across various bikes and catalogs.” “…Mr. Kageyama retired from framebuilding in the early 2000’s, and took up pottery…”!