Sansui Electric
Japanese audio company
Sansui Electric Co., Ltd. (山水電気株式会社, Sansui Denki Kabushiki-gaisha) was a Japanese manufacturer of audio and video equipment headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It was active internationally up until the late 2000s; in 2014 the Chinese company Grande Holdings acquired the rights to license the Sansui name outside Japan.
History
The company was founded in Tokyo in 1947 by Kosaku Kikuchi, who had worked for a radio parts distributor in Tokyo before and during World War II. Due to the poor quality of radio parts Kikuchi had to deal with, he decided to start his private radio part manufacturer facility in December 1944 in Yoyogi, Tokyo. He chose transformers as his initial product line. Kikuchi's thought was "Even with higher prices, let's make the higher quality of products."
In 1954 manufacturing pre-amp, main-amp kits, as well as finished amplifiers which used tubes, was started; in 1958 Sansui introduced the first stereo tube pre- and main amplifiers. By the 1960s Sansui had developed a reputation for making serious audio components. They were sold in foreign markets through that and the next decade. Sansui's amplifiers and tuners from the 1960s and 1970s remain in demand by audio enthusiasts.
Since 1965 the matte-black-faced AU-series amplifiers were released.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sansui Electric” as japanese audio company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as japanese audio company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1123543. VIAF identifies the subject as 253291971. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2014, 1947, 1944 and 1954.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Sansui Electric”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Sansui Electric primary sources, Sansui Electric archive and Sansui research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sansui Electric”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Sansui Electric” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.