Tell us about your background.

After graduating high school, I got a job and worked while road racing as a privateer. When I was 21, an older friend of mine who worked at Yamaha Motor put in a word for me at the company and that led to me joining. Because I was a road racer, I was already accustomed to high speeds and had the requisite skills for riding and braking, so I became a test rider for production motorcycles after I joined. At first, I tested the handling stability of models destined for the U.S. market and later did evaluations for functionality and the overall performance of bikes for European markets. Altogether, I spent around 35 years as a Yamaha test rider. I’ve always liked jobs where I could ride and that’s what kept me doing it for so long!

What’s the difference between riding as a racer and as a test rider?

Racing is just a competition to see who’s fastest and the technical aspects required for being a good test rider are completely different. For example, when doing comparison evaluations, a test rider has to shift at the same place and ride the same line every lap, again and again. Even if you’re riding at over 200 km/h, you have to have enough leeway or presence of mind to think about whether A or B is better. Or, let’s say you spend all morning riding a bike with one set of specifications and the afternoon riding a bike with different specs. You have to be able to detect even the slightest differences between the two as well as have the verbal skills to communicate those feelings to the development team. It took me time to develop these skills in order to do the job properly. But after I became a test rider, I stopped racing. It would affect my job if I got hurt racing or blasting around on mountain roads, plus, I was riding bikes almost every day at work anyway, so that satisfied my desire to ride to begin with.

You helped develop many models for overseas markets. What’s the difference between them and bikes meant for Japan?

Because I was one of the taller test riders, I mostly worked on models for overseas markets. The development of these bikes is also usually done on Yamaha’s test track, but we would sometimes invite test riders from overseas to Japan to try them, or sometimes we would be the ones to go overseas to test bikes. When you actually go and ride in the countries models are destined for, it reveals a lot of issues that remain hidden if limited only to the test track. In developing bikes for international markets, it’s not just about understanding the riding environment but also how local motorcyclists ride, and communicating that information as well as what possibilities could arise to the development team in Japan was very important. Having opportunities to ride in other countries added to my abilities as a test rider and also gave me the chance to experience different motorcycling cultures a little bit.

Nakamura testing a prototype XTZ1200 in Spain in 2009

Did you have any especially memorable experiences while overseas?

We’d go sightseeing on our days off and Europe in particular has so many great motorcycle museums. At the National Motorcycle Museum just outside of Birmingham in the UK, British motorcycles built during the golden age of the country’s industrial revolution are on display like works of art. The first time I visited the museum, I was astonished not just at the beauty of those old machines but also at the sense of culture and appreciation for putting these classics on display. In the same way, there’s the BMW Museum in Germany and the Ducati Museum in Italy. I realized that many foreign manufacturers treat their old models as important cultural assets and accordingly restore and put them up for public display. At the time, Yamaha had no such facility, so I always thought how marvelous it would be if someday we had our own museum like that. So, when the Communication Plaza was built in 1998 and I first saw all these classic Yamahas lined up on display, I felt this immense sense of pride, both for myself and for Yamaha. Now, my job is restoring these old bikes and I feel grateful for the opportunity to make my own small contribution to the Plaza.

What led to you getting a job with the restoration team?

Right up until getting the job, I was working on chassis development in our electric production vehicle department. My work there consisted mainly of accumulating and analyzing data, and I felt like I probably wouldn’t be able to use my true skills ever again. I was already 60 years old and was wondering if there wasn’t some other way I could repay Yamaha for all it had done for me. Right around then, there was an open call for someone to work on restorations. The bikes they were restoring were ones that I’d seen brand new when I was younger, and back when I was racing, we took our machines apart and did all the maintenance ourselves, so I figured I was qualified for the job and applied.

How did you start your new job with bike restorations?

Until last year, Hanai-san was in charge of restorations, and when he was working on getting a TX650 restored, I stayed right next to him and learned the ropes while he did everything from taking apart the chassis to reassembling the engine. We try to keep the bikes as close to their original state as possible. Ideally, they should look just the way they did when they rolled off the assembly line, but sometimes parts are simply unavailable or we often just can’t make them exactly the same anymore. Even if we can’t fulfill a complete restoration, we want to get each bike as close to that as possible so it’s authentic enough to be displayed, so in the course of discussing such matters with the more senior team members, I’ve established my own personal standards for what I think clears that benchmark.

Now that you can do complete restorations by yourself, what has been the toughest challenge you’ve faced so far?

I’m actually having trouble right now with the bodywork for an off-road bike I’m restoring, which had been sitting in storage for roughly forty years. The plastic parts that weren’t exposed to sunlight still have their original molding colors, but the other parts are all faded and have hairline cracks. Right now, I’m having discussions with several different people handling prototyping about how to tackle this. If it was just restoring the bike as a hobby, polishing the surfaces and using a dryer to perform a simple heat treatment for the plastics would be enough to make it a clean enough finish, but not good enough for display purposes. To restore the bike to a condition that will leave viewers properly impressed with it, we have to decide whether to stick to somehow reviving the original color of the parts or painting them anew. We’re still evaluating the pros and cons involved with each approach and trying to decide the best way to move forward.

Have you ever taken apart an old bike and been surprised by anything?

I was actually recently surprised by the front suspension on an old DT125. It was a big seller in the ‘80s and many Yamaha employees commuted to work on it. When I took apart the front fork, I saw that there were actually two springs inside, a soft main spring and a stiff short spring. If you were prioritizing costs, it’d be enough to make the main spring softer and fit a collar to it, but enduro racing was very popular in those days, so I think the bike’s developers probably set the fork up this way so that if customers wanted to do motocross, they could adjust the suspension themselves. I was deeply impressed when I discovered that the developers must’ve decided to add a bit more to the price tag with that second spring because that small addition would effectively expand the range of fun customers could have with the bike. In those days, development teams weren’t as big as they are today and the various project tasks weren’t clearly separated as they are now, so one engineer often did multiple tasks. This meant they would fully put themselves in customers’ shoes, imagining all the kinds of riding they might do and then spending a little more money to add something extra, like that spring. Seeing the Monozukuri spirit of those days in that spring was very nostalgic and made me very happy.

What are your goals for the future?

Well, I only just started this job, so my two immediate focuses are to make sure that the bikes look properly ready for visitors’ eyes and that they also run properly. But as for a goal, it’s for bikes I’ve restored to trigger an emotional response in visitors when they see them. When I’m restoring a bike, I always end up wondering what will happen when it goes on display at the Communication Plaza. I like to imagine a visitor roaming the Plaza suddenly notices the bike and happily rushes over to remember what it meant to them. It’s those sorts of scenes that pop into my head and really make this job a lot of fun.