Models as a Mass Media
Concept
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all rights reserved, Model Graphix magazine Japan ---
----I’m going
backwards in our discussion order here, but before the Ferrari 641/2 we talked
about earlier, were you in charge of designing any of the other 1/12 big scale
series F1 cars, Kiya-san? Maybe I’m
guessing wrong, but it’s been my personal conviction that you designed the
Ferrari 312T4 (sales date: Aug ’80).
Um, the Ferrari 312T4 and the Renault RE20
Turbo (sales date: March ’81) were, as you say, my designs.
----I knew it
right away. The Michelin tire profiles
(cross sections) on the 312T4’s radials were just so exquisite, I thought “This
just has to be Kiya-san’s design!”
Really? (chagrin) You know, for that machine, we couldn’t actually
research the real car. So I had no
choice but to draw out some blueprints on my own at first, then I scribbled
some instructions in the blueprints saying, “We don’t know what the actual car
looks like here so please go take some photos” and handed them to Grand Prix
photographer Akira Mase-san, and he went to take some pictures. But then it seems some Ferrari team people
hemmed in on Mase-san and asked “How do you already know so much about our
312T4 outlines and structures!?” when they saw him doing that. And I had only drawn out the blueprints using
photos in the Italian motorsport magazine Autosprint
as reference.
----Aaah, that’s
a good story (laughs). By the way, on a
similar subject, how much were you involved with the 1/6 and 1/12 motorbike
series?
I hardly touched the 1/6 at all, but I
started up the 1/12 project. The 1/12
was, similarly to what were saying before about F1, a “Let’s commercialize
motorbikes in an easier than 1/6 size” project I pushed through.
However, I had wanted to commercialize
racing motorbike models in doing that, but it was the company’s wish that we
mix in some production bikes…
----Aaah, so bringing
in the Yamaha YZR500 Grand Prix Racer (sales date: Aug ’81) as the first in the
series was your doing, Kiya-san. But,
back in those days, it was rather premature to be commercializing World Grand
Prix racers in Japan.
Yes. Yes it was (laughs). Well, I guess it was the influence I’d had
from Okabe-san (who became a designer at Protar), and I was following his rich line-up
of racer models at Protar in 1/9, you know.
And it’s the pinnacle of 2-wheeled racing… I mean, if you make a comparison to 4 wheels,
the GP500 class is like F1, isn’t it. I
also wanted to appeal to the public with the fact that “These championship
machines are made by Japanese motorbike manufacturers” too.
----So, in
other words, you’re talking about your “plastic models = a kind of mass media
for delivering information to the general public” way of thinking?
Yes, yes.
Well, it’s easy enough to commercialize things that will sell, but then
I was thinking we’ve just got to do it in this (plastic models = mass media)
way.
----If that’s
so, then you’re talking about exactly the same concept as with the 1/12 Honda
F1 that Okabe-san designed. Back then,
no one in Japan even knew about F1, and learned about F1’s existence for the
first time through “Tamiya’s 1/12 model mass media”.
Yes, that’s right. So when we commercialized the YZR then, it
was more to stir up interest.
----Aah, so, in
that respect, then having the YZR as the first in the series, really made
wonderful sense.
… But you know, people had this “Just
Yamahas would be boring, so let’s commercialize the Suzuki RGB500 (sales date:
July ’81) too” idea, and we approached Suzuki first. And the big shots at their racing teams were
very welcoming, saying things like “Come on over and we’ll show you everything!”,
and we’d had environments that were very easy to do our design in.
Yamaha, on the other hand, wouldn’t show us
their YZR. They said like, “Private teams
have production TZs, so why don’t you get them to show you one?” So we went to Ikujiro Takai-san, had him take
pictures of a TZ for us, and made the YZR from that.
So, Yamaha came on strong, and I was a bit
uncomfortable with them (chagrin).
----Something
like that can be surprisingly hurtful, in a big way.
In a big way. It broke my heart, because here I was trying
to be serious about telling Japan
that Yamaha and Suzuki were battling it out on the world’s Grand Prix stage,
using plastic models as mass media.
… But you know, even so, the YZR back then was
memorable for me. What’s more, I gave a
finished model to King Kenny when he came to Sugo circuit. And you know, I modified the TZ and kind of
forced it into a YZR, designing it with my imagination, but, in later years
now, I don’t think it looks much different from a real YZR.