Silk or Katakura Silk was a brand of bikes made by Katakura Bicycle Industry Co. Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan. Katakura Silk is one of the great names of Japanese bicycle making. It was both a quality brand and a mass-market brand manufacturing a wide range of bicycles including children's bikes and folding bikes. However it was their classic racing and cycletouring bicycles that live long in the memories of Japanese cyclists.

Katakura Silk is often thought of in the west as an exclusive top-end brand, but this mix of the exotic and the decently mundane makes it really more equivalent to Bianchi than to Colnago.

Although I am not entirely sure, the history of Katakura Silk may go something like this:

• The company started out as Morita Yarn Factory in 1873 in Tama, Tokyo (side note: in modern times Tama has become the spiritual home of 'Hello Kitty'). The company's product was silk yarn.
• In 1929, after various financial problems the company re-emerged as part of the Katakura Yarn Spinning company, later renamed Katakura Industries.
• In 1943 one of the silk mills was repurposed as a factory manufacturing aircraft parts to support the war effort.
• After the Second World War the company was searching for a product for this factory that was skilled in precision lightweight engineering - and moved into bicycle manufacturing. The first bicycles hit the market in 1946. The bicycles were branded 'Silk' because they were produced by a silk spinning company in an ex-silk spinning factory.
• In 1955 the bicycle business was spun off (geddit?) as Katakura Bicycle Industry.
• In 1964 the Japanese Olympic Road Race team rode Silk bicycles. These Olympic games were a heroic, iconic, much celebrated, landmark, event in the history of the Japanese bicycle industry.
• In 1987 Katakura Bicycle Industry ceased trading. I am not entirely sure that this marks the end of mass production - some sources seem say that the company went through a number of ill-fated restructurings until the mid 1990s.
• In 2005 the Silk brand was bought and used by Silk Bicycle Factory, a boutique, high-end, retro, custom frame builder run by Tadashi Arai. Tadashi Arai had previously worked for Katakura. I believe that, at the time of writing (2025) he is still in business.
• Katakura Industries exists to this day. It is possible that its main business is property investment, but it likes to make great play of its history in the silk industry. Scanning its web site, it is hard to detect even the tiniest reference to the manufacture of fine bicycles.