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Yamaha Motor Company

Japanese motorcycle manufacturer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ158888 ↗
Source-derived summary

Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. (ヤマハ発動機株式会社, Yamaha Hatsudōki Kabushiki gaisha) is a Japanese multinational conglomerate mobility manufacturer that was founded in 1955. The company operates across various industries and manufactures a wide range of motorized products, including motorcycles, motorboats, outboard motors, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

The company was established following its separation from Nippon Gakki Co., Ltd. (currently Yamaha Corporation) and is headquartered in Iwata, Shizuoka, Japan. As of 2024, the company operates development, production, and marketing functions through 137 consolidated subsidiaries. Yamaha has been the world's second-largest motorcycle manufacturer, and it is the global leader in water vehicle sales. In addition, Yamaha holds the world's second-largest market share in chip mounters for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Led by Genichi Kawakami, the company's founder and first president, Yamaha Motor spun off from musical instrument manufacturer Yamaha Corporation in 1955 and began production of its first product, the YA-1 125 cc motorcycle. It was quickly successful and won the 3rd Mount Fuji Ascent Race in its class.

Editorial summary

“Yamaha Motor Company” enters the record as japanese motorcycle manufacturer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yamaha, Motor and Company can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 2024—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1955-07-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Yamaha, Motor and Company.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Yamaha Motor Company” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Yamaha, Motor and Company provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q158888. VIAF identifies the subject as 254717830. 1 of 11 selected statements include explicit references; 9 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955 and 2024.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Yamaha Motor Company”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Yamaha Motor Company primary sources, Yamaha Motor Company archive and Yamaha research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Yamaha Motor Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.