Surfing history of Japan goes back to the early 1960’s. The first surfers were probably American military personnel and they surfed in the Shonan and Boso Peninsula area at that time.

It’s not an easy task to capture the big picture of the early days surfing history of Japan because so many photos and interviews were scattered all over in Japan — it seems like nobody cared about archiving the history in one place and it’s been just like that for many decades.

In 2003 as a personal project, I started gathering the information about our surfing history and organizing the years and the events to ensure it’s in chronological order.

In 2013, I had a chance to digitize old analog films which were shot by Setsuo Oyama in 1966 ~ 1975 and I finally and diligently started this archiving project. 

In 2023, there were few supporters of this project and I digitized more than 10,000 photographs which were from the early days of Japan surfing history. 

2024, to expedite this project in archiving our own surfing history, myself and a longtime supporter took a chance to built the Surfing History Archives of Japan. Our mission is to pass on our surfing history to the next generation.