By day, Ryoichiro and Kenichi Yoshida look like any other smart young Japanese gad-about-towns, dressed in sharp suits, with up-to-the-minute hair cuts. By night, they delve deep into their heritage (and their wardrobes), striding on stage in ceremonial kimonos and wide-legged hakayama pants.

The reason? High-speed, no nonsense strumming on the three-stringed lute-like instruments that the Japanese call shamisen.

But they’re not any old shamisens – they’re Tsugaru-jamisens from Honshu, bigger, and with a thicker fingerboard, to be plucked with a larger plectrum (similar to a guitar pick). Tsugaru players are famed for improvising tunes, and Yoshida brothers follow suit, combining break-neck twanging with modern rhythms and percussion instruments from as far away as Peru.

It takes a lot of time to get good on the shamisen – the brothers began learning at five years old, mastering the ancient techniques under the tutelage of Hokkaido master The First Takashi Sasaki. They spent time performing separately, but it wasn’t until finally coming together in 1999 that the idea for rock and roll style shamisen was born. Reinventing themselves as ‘Yoshida Kyodai,’ the boys set about revolutionising the way young Japanese viewed the ancient instrument, and succeeded. Other shamisen records, selling around 5,000 copies, were left dusty on the shelves while the brothers’ first album, Ibuki, notched up more than 10,000 sales. Since then, three Japanese and three US albums have marched into the charts. But it’s not all recording; the brothers are at their best when performing, and they do that a lot. “We perform ten times a month, on average 120 – 130 times a year,” they told Japanese magazine Nipponia, and they’ve just added more dates.

The next show, hitting Hong Kong this month as part of the New Vision Arts Festival, is a bombastic showcase of spine splitting, banjo-like zinging fare, spanning pop, blues, jazz and Latin - numbers gleaned from across their career. The New York Times’ Jon Pareles calls it “music of pure sinew” – the world hasn’t been this whipped with fusion since Riverdance.

Yoshida Brothers perform at the Shatin Town Hall Auditorium, October 28 – 29, 8pm.
Tickets $320, $220, $120 from Urbtix, 2734 9009.