The Best Japanese-Made Motorcycles Of All Time [2023 Edition]

Why We Picked It:

The story of how the Kawasaki Z1 came to be is one of refusal to defer and sheer engineering might put to excellent use. By the late 1960s, all of the Big Four out of Japan had several models in the USA, from 125cc to the "big" 500cc bikes. However, Harley-Davidson and Indian both had bikes with bigger engines and bigger power, and were using that in their marketing. This irked the Japanese, who had deferred to them as the American manufacturers producing big bikes for the American consumer, and they decided enough was enough.

One of the bikes that came from those ruffled feathers was the Z1. It eschewed the typical Japanese style of a conservative approach, and instead was designed simply to be a stupidly fast and agile motorcycle, and took inspiration from that most American of icons: The muscle car.

The Z1 carried a monster 903cc inline four engine that roared out 83 HP and a butt-ton of torque, and it absolutely blitzed anything on offer from either of the two big American Iron manufacturers. It was the quinessential UJM, and perhaps the best one made, in that it was easy to ride, handled beautifully, went stonkingly fast, and was easy to maintain. It cemented its place in history a decade after its introduction, when a race modified version (KZ1000R) helped both Wayne Rainey and Eddie Lawson both become AMA Superbike champions.

Not a bad run: Decimate the American competition, then at the end of its lifecycle, help establish two legendary racing names.

Why We Picked It:

Yamaha's initial efforts in the export market (read: the USA) were decent, but they weren't as Earth-shaking as the bikes coming from Honda and Kawasaki. They realized this, and realized that they needed to find a niche to take over and dominate. They found it in the middle-displacement sport bike scene.

The Yamaha RD400 was by no means a big bike. It was, in fact, tiny, about as large as a modern day YZF-R3. It came with 399cc parallel twin that put out 44 HP and 30.3 lbs-ft of torque. But, crucially, it was extremely light, at 360 lbs soaking wet with a brick tied to the seat. This made it hilariously agile and flickable, and gave rise to a type of rider that we now refer to as "Hoons," but back in the 1970s they had the much less glamorous title of "Punks."

It could zip around almost any other bike on the road while wailing out its song. It was small and narrow enough to dart between cars in a traffic jam, or even while moving at freeway speeds. It could be ridden extremely hard, and because Yamaha had engineered the hell out of it, it would take the punishment and ask for more. Basically, it was the first true hooning machine, and we now have an entire market segment, the Sport Naked motorcycles, because of this little rascal.

Why We Picked It:

In the entire history of sport bikes, the 1978 to 1982 Honda CBX, sometimes called the CBX1000, stands alone as the single bike, the origin, of the term superbike. The funny thing is that it was almost made by accident. The Honda engineers and designers were allowed to pose the question "What if...?" in designing Honda's next sport bike in 1975, and they brought together an inline six engine from racing in the past decade, with a newly reinforced frame and made the bike long, but comfortable, so the rider could take advantage of the power the engine produced.

The result was a bike that revved like an absolute monster and sounded like a mid-2000s Formula 1 V10 car. It absolutely howled out 105 HP, and could easily reach 140 MPH. As well, by extending the handlebars forward to make room for the engine, but not lowering them, Honda inadvertently created the sport-standard riding position, which many bikes, including their own CBR650R, still use today.

It was a massive hit, but also only lasted for five short years. Several variations were made, from the sport model that we would call a sport naked today, to the fully faired and very capable Sport Touring model. At the time of its release, it also briefly held the record of the fastest production motorcycle ever made. Not bad for only half a decade on the market!

Why We Picked It:

By the 1980s, Suzuki was starting to be considered a bit behind the times. Their styling hadn't really evolved beyond the early 1970s UJM look, and it was beginning to affect their bottom line. In one of the greatest hail mary decisions in motorcycle design history, they turned to Hans Muth and his team at Target Design, the design house behind BMW's all new look and feel for the 1980s, and hired them point blank.

Their goal was to create a hyper-European look that would inspire the design language of the Suzuki bikes of the 1980s. Working on the basis of the GS1000 superbike, Muth and his team created the now legendary cyberpunk-future look of the Katana, and underpinned it with the best bits from Suzuki's parts bins.

It had a frame with superb rigidity and sound geometry, compliant but sporty suspension, and the piece de resistance, the 1,074cc, 16 valve, dual overhead cam inline four engine. It produced 111 HP, 70.8 lbs-ft of torque, and featured independent throttle bodies and carburetors, in the shape of four Mikuni BS34SS downdraft units.

It was such an engineering feat combined with stellar design that not only did it inspire the look of Suzuki's bikes for a good decade, it also laid the groundwork for the first bike to carry the GSX-R tag, the 1985 GSX-R750. Basically, if you ride a Gixxer, you can thank the Katana for helping create that entire model line.

Why We Picked It:

The mid-1980s was a time when big engines and big power were starting to become a thing again, after the oil crisis of the later 1970s. Harley-Davidson had started to make chunky big v-twins again, and most of the other Japanese manufacturers were making big engines for sport bikes. Yamaha, however, took a different approach.

Launching in 1985, the Yamaha V-Max, which was later changed to VMAX, was a surprise in the form of a power cruiser, and not just an ordinary one at that. Instead of relying on big, chunky V-twin to put down the power, a 70-degree banking angle, 1,197cc V4 was instead slung low and forward in the V-Max's frame. The goal really did exist in the name of the bike: Yamaha wanted to have the fastest cruiser on any road, but especially American roads. Period.

Well, when the 1985 launch version of the bike was capable of a nigh-unheard of 150 MPH from a cruiser, it was a whole new idea and identity of what a power cruiser was. It also accelerated like nothing else out there, reaching 60 MPH in under 3 seconds. It was so advanced that its first generation lasted until 2007.

From 2008 to 2020, however, was when Yamaha went completely off the deep end with the second generation. 1,679cc V4. Near as makes no difference 200 HP. 113 lbs-ft at the rear wheel. The result? The Yamaha VMAX still holds the record as the fastest accelerating motorcycle, not just cruiser, but motorcycle, at just a hair over 2.4 seconds 0 to 60.

Why We Picked It:

The 1985 Kawasaki Ninja GPZ900R is one of those motorcycles that is, to borrow the term from the modern Doctor Who TV show, "a fixed point in time." There is the world before the GPZ900R, and the world after it. It was a bike of many firsts, and revolutionized sport bikes as we know them with its release.

It was the first Kawasaki sport bike with 16 valves. It was the first supersport motorcycle, ever, to break beyond 151 MPH. It was a technical masterpiece, a bike that slung a 908cc inline four and produced a stunning 115 HP in the mid-1980s from something that was under 1,000ccs.

It also set the precedent for the future of Kawasaki's sport bikes, as it was the first to ever carry the name Ninja. That little tag before a series of letters and numbers nowadays means you're getting one hell of a sport bike, be it a supersport, superbike, or sport tourer. That pedigree, that innate knowledge of greatness, comes from this humble little bike that just also happened to appear in a tiny little movie called Top Gun.

Why We Picked It:

It is not a stretch at all to say that the Yamaha YZF-R1 is perhaps the best "mainstream" superbike available. You get more features and rider aids in a ZX-10R, you get a confident and capable rocketship in the CBR1000RR-R, and you get a raw, razor's edge ride on a GSX-R1000R. But none of those bikes combine all of those features into one quite as well as the R1.

The biggest thing that the original 1998 YZF-R1 brought to the table was the ingenous "Stacked engine" design. Instead of placing the transmission input shaft behind the crankshaft, Yamaha lifted the engine a little and put the input shaft under it. This shortened the space that the engine took up as a whole unit in the frame, as well as put the bulk of the engine weight just below the midline, which allowed for the swingarm to made longer, while also shortening the overall bike and optimizing the center of gravity.

The design was so ingenious that by 2001, every supersport and superbike used a stacked gearbox system, and it is still in use to this day. Not one to sit on their laurels, however, Yamaha gave the superbike world another solid punch in the face in 2007 by introducing the first throttle-by-wire system used in a superbike, Yamaha Computer Controlled Throttle, or YCC-T, and gave the engine a massive boost in power to 191 HP from its original 150 HP.

Even today, if you swing a leg over an R1 and get it going on a track, it is absolutely sublime in how it communicates and responds. There are very few bikes that can be as at one with you as the Yamaha, and that alone makes it one of the best Japanese bikes ever made.

Why We Picked It:

Ever since 1999, there has been no bike quite like the Suzuki SV650. It is one of those motorcycles that just got everything right out of the gate, and apart from a 3 year misstep (the Gladius), it has consistently been one of the best motorcycles not just for beginners, but one of the best motorcycles of all time.

It is perhaps the most forgiving sport naked bike you can think of, with a power curve so linear that you could use it to cut perfectly even slices of whatever you're cutting. Open the wrist a little, get a little power. Open it all the way, you'll still get a buttload of power, but it will arrive gradually over a second or two. It is hilariously nimble for its size and weight, and absolutely loves to get its lean on.

What makes it the best for beginners, however, is that it's quite raw. It communicates what it's doing through all the contact points. The V-twin mostly cancels out its own vibration, so the road feel is excellent. It has superb brakes for when you need to toss the anchors out. It is also very comfortable for all day riding, and the confidence you feel when you lean it into a corner and feel it bite is as good as any superbike out there. As well, the more experienced you get with it, the more it rewards you, transforming from a beginner bike into a proper canyon carver and urban rocket. Did we mention that it is also very affordable?

It is one of those extremely rare "perfect bikes," and definitely deserves to be here on this list.

Why We Picked It:

Suzuki did have a bit of a rough patch in the 1990s, but starting in 1999 with the Hayabusa, they dug their heels in and started cranking out some pretty incredibly motorcycles. The 2000s saw the newest GSX-R models, the V-Strom ADV bikes, the SV650 mentioned above, and also brought about the biggest, baddest cruiser that Suzuki has ever made: The M109R B.O.S.S.

Sporting a monstrous 1,783cc v-twin, this is not a bike for those that want to tiptoe around life quietly. This is a statement bike, a big double blasting set of middle fingers directed at Harley-Davidson and Indian, at Kawasaki and Yamaha, and at pretty much everyone else. 128 HP, 118 lbs-ft of torque, 764 lbs soaking wet, and looking angry enough that you'd punch your own face for it if it told you to.

It makes sense that that B.O.S.S. means "Blacked Out Suzuki Special," because this is a muscle cruiser to define all muscle cruisers. Nothing from the other companies in the Big Four currently comes close to it, and even if it did, the M109R would probably punch it square in the face. From the normally conservative and polite Japanese, the B.O.S.S. is about as rude a bike as they could make... and honestly, we love them for it. We guess the saying of "walk quietly but carry a big stick" is one of the many mottos that are used at Suzuki HQ!

Why We Picked It:

It's no secret that ever since about 2010, the number of new riders entering the hobby every year was on a downward trend. It can be blamed on any number of things, but the deep, dark truth is that the market was getting saturated with sport bikes and big heavy cruisers, and many that were looking at either of those markets were getting discouraged.

Honda saw this, and decided that it was their turn to make a beginner bike that could become a permanent bike. While they had made several Rebel cruisers before, back in the 1980s and 1990s, the new Rebels from 2017, officially coded as the CMX300 and CMX500 were designed from the ground up to be the perfect beginner bike for almost anyone.

In a time when our bikes are becoming overloaded with features, Honda went the other way and only really left ABS in, and even then, it's an option. There are no other real rider aids, there is a very basic ride mode setting for wet or dry, and that's it. That would spell disaster for many bikes, but once you sit on one of the new Rebels and ride it even 30 feet down the road, you understand exactly why it was made.

It's raw, but progressive and linear. It communicates everything but also gives you some of the biggest margins of error to correct a developing issue without making you panic. It even is happy to get its lean on to the point that you can scrape a peg, and inspires confidence while also teaching a new rider everything about how to ride a motorcycle.

While it has taken a little time, sales of the Rebel have been increasing year over year, and for the first time in a long time, the ridership figures have flattened out in an almost direct correlation to the number of Rebels sold. Coincidence? Or just a damned good bike that deserves to be on this list?