Photo/Illutration Real Sound Viewing in Yamaha Innovation Road Corporate Museum boasts a live performance reproduction system that allows visitors to relive the power of an artist’s performance. (Photo by Lisa Vogt)

OK, folks, tell me. What does the Yamaha Company logo look like? I don’t mean the simple all-caps sans-serif YAMAHA letters. I’m asking you to recall that roundish logo. Can you see in your mind’s eye exactly what it looks like and what it’s all about?

I asked my best friend this, and she immediately gave the correct answer, and I was floored.

Until I visited the Yamaha Innovation Road Corporate Museum in Hamamatsu, I could not have told you that it’s three tuning forks interlocked in a circle. Did you know this?

In 1887, Torakusu Yamaha (1851-1916), a watch and medical equipment repairman, was asked to fix an elementary school’s musical organ. He said he wasn’t sure but that he would give it a try, and ta-da! He succeeded.

It was then that a vision took root in the young man. He made a prototype organ and took it to a music college in Tokyo for feedback.

This is in the late 1800s, mind you, way before Shinkansen services.

Torakusu donned a sandogasa conical hat, a tenugui towel around his neck and momohiki close-fitting trousers. He walked up and down the Hakone mountains one waraji straw sandal step at a time, carrying his organ.

The image of the founder transporting his instrument in such a fashion amuses me.

In a mere 15 years, his company, Nippon Gakki, was producing grand pianos. Pretty impressive!

As I browsed the museum, I was surprised at how many Yamaha products I have owned over the years, beginning with my first piano.

Off the top of my head, I’ve had Yamaha speakers, tennis rackets, skis named after me (Yamaha Lisa Fiberglass, which I adored), a turntable and a guitar.

I also recall seeing Yamaha branding in the bathroom, or was it kitchen sink, in one of my homes growing up.

For the musically inclined, you will be like a kid in a candy store, as museum visitors are welcome to play the instruments on display. Sometimes, it was like watching a virtuoso performing a concerto. I refrained from playing “Chopsticks.”

What impressed me most was Yamaha’s innovative Real Sound Viewing, a state-of-the-art technology that lets audiences experience music visually and audibly, creating a multi-sensory experience--even when not present at a live performance. It’s hard to describe and something you simply must experience firsthand.

The museum showcases the company’s rich history and its innovative spirit moving forward. Yamaha continues to make waves.

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This article by Lisa Vogt, a Washington-born and Tokyo-based photographer, originally appeared in the Oct. 27 issue of Asahi Weekly. It is part of the series “Lisa’s Things, Places and Events,” which depicts various parts of the country through the perspective of the author, a professor at Aoyama Gakuin University.

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