Welcome to the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club

Welcome to the VJMC, the UK’s premier club for Japanese bikes fifteen years old and over. The club was founded in 1982 by a small group of like minded enthusiasts..

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Club Information

Find our more about what the club offers.

Club Events

From Section run events to the major shows. All the details here.

Sections

There are VJMC Sections all over the UK and Internationally. Find your local section here.

Machine Dating

Let us help with dating your machine from £25

Regalia

Regalia now available from Flying Colours

Tansha Archive Download

Now available to purchase and download as pdf documents

Book Reviews

Books we've read and enjoyed

Histories

The rise of Japanese motorcycles.

Bikes

See a selection of our members bikes. From tiddlers to the superbikes from the last few decades.

Tansha

Our bi-monthly magazine. View the latest summary here.

Find our full range of services, marque experts.

Buy and sell complete machines and parts.

Shop

Find a huge array of books, manuals, clothing, parts and accessories.

Insurance

Get a quote from our preferred insurers. Members receive discounts on insurance.

Trade Advertising

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Much More . . .

Browse the pages on the top menu for much more

To misappropriate and modify a well-known song …” summers here and the time is right for riding on streets”. Well hopefully the better weather is here but at the time of writing (mid-May) we’re still having the occasional air frost and day time temperatures are struggling to get into double figures. My summer gloves are currently still enjoying a longer than usual hibernation.

First off an appeal for potential cover shots please. Tansha is in serious need of well composed portrait shots that we can use. So if you’re at an event, writing and article or simply photographing your bikes please help if you can. Simply turn the camera through 90 degrees and take some hi-res pictures. If you can leave the top 25% of the frame with a neutral background then so much the better… this is where we’ll drop the TANSHA header. Leave some space around the bike so we can fit your image to the front cover’s requirements and the job is a good ‘un as they say. We are so short of cover images that this issue’s front comes from my holiday album and I don’t have any more either. If you look carefully at the Suzuki TS125’s tank you can see where some brave soul has welded up the tank around the fuel tap. Presumably Nicaragua has its fair share of ethanol doped petrol as well then?   Who would have thought Central America was blighted by the wretched stuff?

Tansha is always looking for new and fresh articles to run with and next issue I’ll be kicking off a retrospective “When We Were Younger” page or two. If you have old film images from back in the day we’d love to carry them. Either hi-res scans (300dpi) or you can send the originals to us and we’ll scan them then send them back.  Please add a few lines of text (50 words max) and we can then publish your period memories. 

And talking of new features a huge thank you to David Anderson for coming up with a fascinating and novel concept that most of us are potentially capable of adding to - Bodges I Have Found. If you can take some pictures of disasters, you’ve unearthed ,as well as sending in your words,  we can let the rest of the members see they are not alone in dealing with the ham fisted, dubious, questionable and downright dodgy repairs some owners perpetrate upon their bikes.
To all the members who send in copy thank you for all your hard work. If it doesn’t appear in print immediately please bear with us – your input will get used. Putting any magazine together is not unlike plate spinning or juggling; lots of paraphernalia to keep your eye on whilst balancing other stuff. This means ensuring Tansha maintains a balance of articles without too much emphasis on any one marque, only covering two strokes, favouring air cooled fours etc. etc.

Steve Cooper

VJMC Editor