Samurais, watches, organs, and motorcycles: the unusual story of Yamaha

Today, Wakayama is one of the most important cities in the Kansai region of Japan. It is home to nearly 400,000 people. If you climb to the top of Iwagami-yama, a small hill about 240 meters high, you can see its entire expanse. In the foreground, traditional Japanese houses blend with new skyscrapers; on the horizon, the smoking chimneys of the metallurgical industry; embracing everything, the Gulf of Osaka. It was here that, on April 20, 1851, a samurai family from the Kishu Tokugawa clan had a son, Torakusu Yamaha. As a child, he ran around the town with one obsession: watches. At that time, they were just beginning to become popular in Osaka. When he grew up, he ended up behind the counter of a watchmaker, a job he combined with his business studies. In class, no one knew they were sharing a classroom with the man who would later give his name to a true empire: Yamaha.

In 2024 alone, this Japanese multinational generated nearly €20 billion in sales worldwide, selling everything from musical instruments to motorcycles. The company's two largest divisions—Yamaha Corporation, dedicated to musical instruments, and Yamaha Motor, to vehicles and engines—have a combined total of more than 80,000 employees. But how did the son of a samurai family plant the seeds for this gigantic business?

The beginning: a harmonium

Yamaha's origins are curious. One day in 1887, Hamamatsu Jinjo Elementary School contacted Torakusu with a commission. The school's harmonium, an instrument similar to an organ but without pipes, had broken down, and they asked him if he could repair it. "Not only did he accept the challenge and go ahead, but he also made a detailed drawing of what the instrument's interior looked like," the company recalls today. At home, he built an improved prototype.

"It is said that, once it was finished, he carried it on his shoulder and crossed the mountains until he reached what is now Tokyo University of the Arts," the brand's story continues in an epic tone. There, however, they didn't go there for organs: they tested it and found it had serious tuning problems. "Torakusu didn't give up," Yamaha assures. "He took up musical language and didn't stop until he found the formula to tune it perfectly," he concludes. All day long, he carried a tuning fork, a small metal instrument that, when vibrated, produces a pure sound, which is used as a reference note to tune another instrument. That's why, even today, the Yamaha logo consists of three crossed tuning forks.

Diversification sounds good

All this culminated in Torakusu Yamaha opening his own piano-making workshop on October 12, 1897. Three years later, he introduced his first piano model. In 1903, leveraging the experience he had gained making these instruments, he began manufacturing luxury furniture. In 1915, he added harmonicas to his catalog, and fifteen years later, he opened an acoustic research laboratory to continue improving his products. But when World War II broke out, production changed. His factories adapted to the war economy: everything from propellers to all kinds of aircraft components came out of Yamaha's production lines.

All the knowledge acquired during this turbulent period was soon reinvested in another line of business for the company. In 1953, with the company's facilities partially underutilized and the economy still recovering, Yamaha tried its hand at the motorcycle sector. In 1955, it spun off a part of the company and renamed it Yamaha Motor. The first model, the YA-1, was already a sales success. Today, Yamaha is one of the best-selling motorcycle brands in the world.

In the 1960s, while Yamaha's music and technology arm was innovating with electronic keyboards and synthesizers, Yamaha Motors was also succeeding beyond motorcycles, with engines for boats, snowmobiles, and quads, for example. Today, Yamaha Corporation and Yamaha Motor are independent companies, but they share a common origin, name, and founding values. In Spain, the first Yamaha motorcycles arrived in the 1980s, with the creation of SEMSA, an alliance between Banesto, Banca Catalana, and the Japanese company Yamaha. In 1983, Yamaha acquired the entire company.