The Eternal Flame: The Hayashi Family and the Rise of JDM SHOP

The Eternal Flame: The Hayashi Family and the Rise of JDM SHOP

In a quiet industrial corner of Nagoya’s Atsuta ward, behind an unassuming roll-up door that looks like it has survived three earthquakes and one typhoon, sits the original JDM SHOP. The sign is faded, the concrete floor is permanently stained with 70 years of spilled 10W-40, and the air still smells faintly of leaded gasoline and cigarette smoke. This is where it all began. This is where Hiroshi Hayashi, a 27-year-old ex-Imperial Navy mechanic with grease under his fingernails and a dream in his heart, hung his shingle in 1954 and changed Japanese car culture forever.

Chapter One – The Spark (1954-1979)

Hiroshi Hayashi never intended to build an empire. After the war he simply wanted to go fast. With occupation-era scrapyards full of discarded American jeeps and a booming domestic industry desperate for speed parts, he began machining his own pistons on a battered South Bend lathe he bought for two cartons of Lucky Strikes. His first “shop” was a 4-meter-wide garage behind his parents’ house. Word spread quickly: if you wanted a twin-carb manifold for your Datsun 110 that actually worked, you went to “Hayashi-san.”

By 1962 the little garage couldn’t contain the demand. Fuji Speedway had just opened, the Prince Skyline was tearing up the tracks, and every young salaryman with a KE10 Corolla wanted more power. Hiroshi moved into a proper 200-m² workshop and began importing Weber carburetors from Italy and Solex from Germany —the first man in Japan to do so legally. He stamped every box with a simple red rising-sun logo and the words “JDM SHOP – Real Parts for Real Drivers.”

When Hiroshi died suddenly in 1979 at age 52, the company was still just one shop and eight employees. Everyone assumed it would close. They hadn’t met his son, Kenji.

Chapter Two – The Explosion (1980-1999) Kenji Hayashi was the opposite of his quiet, methodical father. Loud, chain-smoking, and fearless, he had spent the 1970s racing a works-supported Sunny truck in the Fuji Freshman races. He took over JDM SHOP the week after the funeral and immediately mortgaged everything to buy a bankrupt warehouse in Osaka.

Under Kenji the company transformed from a parts retailer into Japan’s largest authentic JDM wholesaler. He flew to the U.S. in 1984 with two suitcases full of R32 GT-R brochures before the car even existed in showrooms, convincing American importers they needed to prepare. When the bubble economy roared, Kenji roared louder: private-label turbo kits, titanium exhausts, carbon-kevlar bumpers, and the legendary “Hayashi Spec” coilovers that still command cult status today.

By 1991 JDM SHOP had six locations in Japan, a racing team running Group A Skylines, and the first-ever mail-order catalog printed entirely in English. Kenji’s famous quote from a 1993 Option magazine interview: “Replica parts are for people who want to look fast. We sell parts for people who want to be fast.”

Chapter Three – The Dark Years and the Rebirth (2000-2012) The collapse of the bubble economy hit the tuning industry like a tsunami. Shops closed overnight. Kenji, now in his late 50s, refused to downsize. He kept every employee on payroll even while losing money for four straight years. In 2004 he suffered a stroke behind the wheel of his personal Hakosuka GT-R and spent six months in rehabilitation.

His daughter, Aiko Hayashi — at the time a 28-year-old UCLA business graduate who spoke better English than Japanese — was summoned home. Everyone expected her to sell the company. Instead she modernized it. She launched jdmshop.global in 2005 — one of the first professional e-commerce sites in the JDM industry — and opened distribution centers in California and Melbourne. She introduced QR-coded authenticity certificates, fought Chinese counterfeiters in court, and quietly bought out rival wholesalers who had gone bankrupt.

By 2010, when Kenji finally retired, JDM SHOP was profitable again and shipping to 87 countries.

Chapter Four – The Global Empire (2013-Present) Today JDM SHOP is run by the fourth generation: Aiko’s younger brother Ryusei (42) as CEO and her son Kaito (23) as head of product development. The numbers are staggering:

• 14 flagship retail stores (7 in Japan, 2 in USA, 1 each in Australia, UK, Germany, Thailand, UAE)
• 9 warehouses worldwide with over 380,000 unique part numbers
• Exclusive distribution rights for 43 Japanese manufacturers including Tomei, HKS, Trust/GReddy, Cusco, and Blitz
• A private museum in Nagoya housing 48 significant cars, including the actual #73 Group A R32 GT-R that won the 1990 Nürburgring 24 Hours
• Over 1,400 employees worldwide

Yet the company still hand-builds certain legendary parts in the original Atsuta workshop. The same lathe Hiroshi bought in 1954 is still in use, now operated by 78-year-old master machinist Tanaka-san, who started as Hiroshi’s very first apprentice.

Ryusei Hayashi, wearing the same navy work jacket every Hayashi patriarch has worn since 1954, told me during my visit last month: “We don’t chase trends. We don’t do widebody kits for Teslas. We sell the same soul my grandfather sold in 1954: authentic Japanese performance. Everything else is noise.”

As electrified performance cars rise and the traditional internal-combustion era arguably wanes, JDM SHOP has quietly begun developing EV-specific upgrades — lightweight carbon battery enclosures, regenerative-brake tuning modules, and even a bolt-in motor swap kit for the Nissan Leafs using refurbished Tesla Plaid drive units. Kaito Hayashi, the 23-year-old heir, grinned when I asked about the future:

“Grandfather started with scrapyard jeep axles. We’ll figure it out. The flame doesn’t go out. It just changes fuel.”

Seventy-one years after a young mechanic opened a tiny garage door in postwar Nagoya, JDM SHOP remains exactly what Hiroshi Hayashi intended: the beating heart of authentic Japanese performance, passed hand to hand, generation to generation, border to border.

The flame still burns. And it burns bright red.