 or 'thing') plus the German "Kuh" ('cow'); therefore he chose the transliteration 'Kôsçak Yamada'.Born in Tokyo, Yamada started his music education at Tokyo Music School in 1904.He studied there under the German composers and Heinrich Werkmeister In 1910, he left Japan for Germany where he enrolled at the Prussian Academy of Arts and learnt composition under Max Bruch and Karl Leopold Wolf and piano under Carl August Heymann-Rheineck, before returning to Japan in late 1913.