please ID this japanese axe...

[polarbee]

[VintAxe]

Hi polarbee.

You are correct that this guitar was built by Kawai. It has the classic Kawai pickups that were used in many of their instruments beginning in 1965. The use of these pickups began to fade around 1969.

As far as a model, these guitars were most often sold through department stores and catalog distributors. These distributors were not concerned with actual model numbers and sold the guitars as "two pickup" or "three pickup" guitars. I'm sure Kawai has some type of model designation for them but that information may be lost forever.