Shop visit: Heiwa 平和モーターサイクル

The country with the most influence on the modern custom scene is Japan. The machines we loosely call ‘café racers’ actually have more in common with the Japanese style of bike building than the British originals of the 1960s. A handful of Japanese shops are on the radar in the west, notably Zero Engineering, Brat Style and Ritmo Sereno. But most are relatively unknown, because Japan is still a closed book to a lot of the western world. One of the most respected Japanese workshops is Heiwa—meaning ‘Peace’—run by Kengo Kimura (below). It’s in Hiroshima, a four-hour trip from Tokyo...