Not a shop, not a flipping blog. A quiet, long-term project to document Japanese motorcycles from the 70s to 90s before the metal, paint and stories disappear for good.
Japanese Bike Archive is a small independent project based in Japan, dedicated to preserving the visual and historical details of Japanese motorcycles from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
No sponsored content, no influencer noise. Just machines, documents and memories – slowly collected, scanned and organised.
Think of it as a digital shed: boxes of brochures, faded photos, race posters and personal notes, gradually opened and catalogued.
Years: approx. 1970–1999
Focus: Road bikes, sport bikes, race replicas, 2-strokes, touring, naked,
and a few important oddballs.
Brands: Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki – plus small makers where relevant.
– Not a price guide
– Not a dealer network
– Not a general moto blog
– Chassis codes, colours, trim details
– Period brochures, adverts and race context
– First-hand notes when possible
These decades produced some of the most influential motorcycles ever built:
Many of these machines are now scattered across sheds, containers and auctions. Some will be restored. Many will be parted out. A few will simply vanish.
Before that happens, somebody has to quietly keep the record straight. This archive is one attempt at that.
This is not a full database. It is a set of “lines” we slowly build out – one brochure, one bike, one story at a time.
CB750, Z1 and their siblings – machines that moved Japan from domestic transport to global aspiration. Focus on colours, trim variations and early export specs.
RZ / RD, NS, KR, RG and friends. From factory brochures to club-level racing photos, we track how these bikes evolved before emissions killed the class.
FZ, CBR, GSX-R, ZXR, TZR, NSR – full-fairing bikes that brought race paddock silhouettes to suburban streets. Chassis codes, liveries and limited runs are key.
Small-displacement commuters, courier workhorses, humble tourers. Not glamorous, but part of daily life in Japan – and often the first bike people remember.
Domestic-market models, limited colours, weird one-year variants. The things that confuse foreign catalogues the most.
The project is built slowly, with a bias toward primary material:
When there is doubt, we say “we don’t know yet” instead of guessing. Corrections from owners, mechanics and historians are always welcome.
As the archive grows, selected lines may be compiled into:
These will be offered in limited, carefully edited form – more as documentation than lifestyle merchandise.
The archive is maintained by a small, anonymous team in Japan – people who grew up around these machines, saw them new in showrooms, and watched them slowly move from daily transport to nostalgia.
We are not a museum and do not run public tours. This is a long-term, low-noise project built mostly at night, one scan and one note at a time.
Contributions & Enquiries
If you have period brochures, dealer photos, or detailed knowledge about a specific Japanese bike from the 70s–90s and are willing to share, we would be happy to hear from you.
We are especially interested in original export brochures, race support photos, and Japan-only colour schemes.
Email: info@japanesebikearchive.com
(If this address is not active yet, the project is still in its quiet early phase.)
Classic Japanese cars from the same era (70s–90s) are archived here: