Narazo Shimazu (1888–1973) founded Shimazu Motor Research Institute, that built the

NS Motorcycle The NS motorcycle, made by Narazo Shimazu in 1909, was the first motorcycle to be designed, built and sold in Japan. Shimazu created the Nihon Motorcycle Company (NMC) to manufacture the NS. In 1926 he then produced another new motorcycle design, ...

Biography

Shimazu was born in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

in 1888. In 1903, his father bought him a

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bic ...

. In the same year he encountered a motorcycle. He went to Tokyo for races of foreign motorcycles. In 1908, at the age of 20, he established the Shimazu Motor Research Institute, where he designed and built the first two-stroke engine in Japan.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shimazu, Narazo 1888 births 1973 deaths Japanese motorcycle designers