You're welcome Peter!
I've been living in Australia for over 50 years- there were many lower price Japanese electric guitars imported here since the early/mid '60's...
Quite a few different branded models from different Japanese makers included violin shaped basses, which were of course loosely based on Paul McCartney's Hofner bass..
There were Japanese copies of many famous guitar brands, Fender and Gibson etc of course, but also they copied other non USA models, like Burns, Vox etc.
Some even copied other Japanese brands- I've seen cheaply made Japanese copies of contemporary up-market YAMAHA guitars!
However, the era of more accurate copies didn't really start until the early '70's- and by the mid/late '70's the Japanese copies were so good and close to real Fenders and Gibsons that it was only the name on the headstock which betrayed their origin!
However, the earlier copies like your mate's bass were nowhere near as accurate, for whatever reason- the blokes designing those guitars must have been a bit shortsighted as some copies were hardly exact!
A lot of people nowadays like and collect these old early guitars, and they fetch quite reasonable prices considering they were originally only low budget guitars..