was a Japanese composer, born in Tokyo. Yashiro entered the Tokyo Music Academy (presently the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music

Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music

or is one of the oldest and most prestigious art schools in Japan. Located in Ueno Park, it also has facilities in Toride, Ibaraki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, and Kitasenju, Adachi, Tokyo...

) in 1945, where he studied composition under Kunihiko Hashimoto

Kunihiko Hashimoto

was a Japanese composer, violinist, conductor, and musical educator. He was born in the Hongo district of Tokyo. In 1923, he entered the Tokyo Music School where he studied violin and conducting. In composition, he was largely self-taught, but later he would study that subject as a graduate...

, Yujiro Ikeuchi, Akira Ifukube

Akira Ifukube

was a Japanese composer of classical music and film scores, perhaps best known for his work on the soundtracks of the Godzilla movies by Toho.-Biography:...

, and Tomojiro Ikenouchi

Tomojiro Ikenouchi

was a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music and professor born in Tokyo, Japan. The son of a haiku poet, Ikenouchi traveled to Paris in 1927, where he studied composition with Henri Büsser and piano with Lazare Levy. His music is influenced by French Impressionist music...

, and piano under Noboru Toyomasu, Leonid Kreutzer

Leonid Kreutzer

Leonid Kreutzer was a classical pianist.Kreutzer was born to a family of German Jewish parents. He was a highly influential piano teacher at the Berlin Academy of Music , together with Egon Petri...

, and Kiyo Kawakami. Upon finishing graduate courses in 1951, he went to Europe with Toshiro Mayuzumi

Toshiro Mayuzumi

Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer.-Biography:...

 to study with a French governmental fellowship at Paris Conservatory. There he learned composition and orchestration from Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

, Tony Oban, and Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

. He returned home in 1956.

He received several prizes for his compositions, including the Eighth Mainichi Music Prize in 1957 for String Quartet, which he had written while studying abroad, and Sixteenth Otaka Prize and the Twenty-first National Art Festival Award in 1968 for his Piano Concerto (1964–1967) which was commissioned by NHK

NHK

NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....

. Yashiro also wrote music for movies, broadcasts, and stages.

In 1968, Yashiro was inaugurated as an assistant professor at his alma mater

Alma mater

Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...

, and he was promoted to professor in 1974. He died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 47.