Yoshimatsu was a fan of The Walker Brothers and The Ventures when he was 13, but symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky fascinated him when he was 14.
Although he says that he was not influenced in any way by Matsumura's style, his 1974 solo piano piece, To the companion star of Sirius (Op.
[2] In Hiroshi Aoshima's book Composer's Way of Thinking (Kodansha's New Library of Knowledge, 2004), there is a description that he won the Otaka prize for Threnody to Toki (p. 263), but Yoshimatsu himself has denied this on his website.
To date, Yoshimatsu has composed six symphonies and twelve concertos: one each for bassoon, cello, guitar, trombone, alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, marimba, chamber orchestra, traditional Japanese instruments, and two for piano (one for the left hand only and one for both hands).
His 'Atom Hearts Club Suites' for string orchestra explicitly pay homage to the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.