Beautiful retro styled lights by Kimura from Jitensha Studio

Browsing around today I came across these for the first time:

Kimura flashlight

Kimura tail lamp

They are Kimura lights from Jitenshi Studio, a bicycle shop in Japan that specializes in high quality touring and randonneuring bikes.  The lights are handmade by one Mr. Kimura.  They're not inexpensive ($195 USD for the flashlight, $125 for the taillight), but the quality looks amazing, easily rivalling similarly priced offerings by Schmidt or Supernova, but with infinitely more retro charm.  Too bad Mr. Kimura isn't in the business of making dynamo lights.

Mounting a vintage flashlight on a front rack seems to be a popular way to dress up your vintage (or modern classical) touring/randonneuring bike.  Historically I think these flashlights served as auxiliary lighting for bottle dynamo systems when stopped. Here is a particularly gorgeous example from the Velo-Orange site:

Vintage flashlight on a bike.  Image from Velo-Orange.

The tail lamp is especially intriguing.  I wonder if the lens is pulled from a mass-produced light or if it was made specially for this application.  They also have a nice selection of reflectors.