Toru Yamashita

Biography

Toru Yamashita, known mononymously as Toru, is a Japanese musician and the guitarist and leader of the band ONE OK ROCK. With two other men, Kohei and Takuya, Toru and Ryota formed a hip-hop dance group called Heads when they were fifth and sixth-graders. They participated in dance competitions in the late 1990s, between the years 1995 to 1999. Heads debuted with a single entitled "screeeem!" in July 2000 and followed with "Gooood or Bad!" in November, produced for Amuse, Inc. Heads disbanded in 2002, and in 2003 they took a break to improve their abilities. They merged into a new group with seven other members and were called GROUND 0. In 2005, Toru took a main role in the TV series Shibuya Fifteen. He contributed a cameo as a high school student in Kamen Rider Hibiki. That year, he invited Ryota, their upperclassman Alex, and his friend Yuu Koyanagi to form a rock band. Later, Toru became the leader of this band, later named ONE OK ROCK. He met Takahiro Moriuchi when he performed with his previous band and then stalked him until he joined ONE OK ROCK, after repeated rejections. After Alex quit the band, Toru switched from rhythm guitar to lead guitar. On December 28, 2021, he announced that he had married actress and model Aya Ōmasa. He has one child, born in 2025.