Goro Takahashi

Early life

Goro was born in Jujo, Tokyo, on June 29, 1939, and had five older brothers. Despite being the sixth child, he was called Goro (after go (五), the number five in Japanese) because at the time of his birth he was the fifth living son, as one of his older brothers had already died in war. His father Seiji (清二) was a hardware seller who wrote haiku under the pseudonym Seisen (清 泉).

During junior high school, Goro attended a summer camp in the forest of Hayama, Kanagawa. There he met an American soldier stationed in Japan who, despite the language barrier, taught him leather crafting. Goro kept visiting him year after year, until eventually the soldier was relieved of his duties and returned to the US. Before leaving, he gifted Goro his leather-crafting tools. After graduation, at the age of 16, Goro interrupted his studies and used those tools to craft leather belts and engrave them with floral patterns characteristic of the American West. He brought these belts to Nakata Shoten (ja:中田商店), a shop dealing in military paraphernalia in the Ameyoko shopping district in Ueno. The owner, Tadao Nakata (中田忠夫), initially placed an order of 100 belts, and later commissioned Goro leather bags, Native and Western accessories. During this time he briefly took on an apprentice, his nephew Taro Takahashi (ja:高橋太郎), who would later become a surfer renowned for crafting the first fiberglass surfboard in Japan.

Goro was considered a perfectionist and a free-spirited man, dividing his time between honing his craft and roaming Tokyo and the United States on his motorcycles. Goro had a dog named Snow, a white Kishu he adopted after finding him abandoned on a beach in Chiba, where Goro was looking for driftwood to put on display in the shop. Much to the dismay of other pet owners, Goro was renowned for letting Snow roam free without a collar, not picking up his feces, and bringing him on his motorcycle on both his daily commute and longer trips.

Goro started riding motorcycles in his mid-40s and owned several Harley-Davidson and Indian Motorcycles both in Japan and in the United States. When he turned 50, he rode a red 1937 Indian Chief on a solo trip from Los Angeles to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota for a ceremony. He would often visit the Little Sky family in August, staying for three months, living in his tipi and riding motorcycles with his adoptive brother Beau, who was also a biker. In South Dakota he also participated in a Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. In 1992 he embarked on a transcontinental trip from Los Angeles to New York City via Milwaukee, where, despite riding an Indian, he attended Harley-Davidson's 90th anniversary party and met Willie G. Davidson.