VOLUME 56 ISSUE 41 OCTOBER 15, 2019 P91
W
e assemble in the parking lot of a
busy but nondescript factory right
in the heart of miya-ku's business
district, about an hour outside the constant
chaos of downtown Tokyo.
To my right, a pile of boxes bearing the
famous blue oval of Arai Helmets and to my
left, the walkway to the shell department—
the birthplace of any new Arai.
It's a mild day, but as we enter the admit-
tedly messy factory—the first of four in our
three-day tour—the heat from the various ma-
chines blasts up your nostrils and fills your
lungs, the smell of fiberglass accompanied
by stained posters dotting the walls of racers
past who wore these handcrafted helmets.
We walk through the searing sounds of
machines baking fiberglass to a mold sta-
tion, where an Arai Shell Expert is carefully
creating the 20 different cuts of material
that include regular fiberglass and Arai's
Superfiber (30 percent stronger than regular
fiberglass but six times more expensive) that
make up an Arai Regent-X, a brand new hel-
met for 2020. He will eventually place them
into what is essentially a cast steel oven that,
when resin is added and a pneumatic bag in-
flated, pushes the resin outwards into every
possible gap and crevice, binding the parts
to eventually form an R75 shell, named so as
it has a continuous curve radius of no more
than 75mm—the shape of each new Arai. He
will also put his name on the inside of the
shell so you can always know who made it.
O S E D D O O R S
