Tomoko Yamamoto was born in 1943 in Tokyo, Japan, but her home town, called Musashino-shi, is outside of the 23 districts of Tokyo. Her early exposure to nature and photography was nurtured by her father, an avid amateur photographer, hiker, and skiier, who took her and her younger sister on gradually more difficult hikes while her exposure to music was encouraged by her mother who had her started on piano lessons at age 7.

After college in Tokyo, Tomoko Yamamoto came to the United States as a student in 1966 and finished her Ph.D. in biophysics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1973. She came to Baltimore, Maryland in 1982 after 16 years of living in various places in Illinois, Michigan, New York State, and Pennsylvania. After having engaged in biophysical research, physics teaching, and technical translation, her love for the arts was reawakened after she started taking her voice lessons for the first time in 1988.

Tomoko Yamamoto exhibited her photographs in various galleries in the Mid-Atlantic region and in New York City starting in 1989 including some juried shows. She studied voice with Lynn Taylor Hebden and Serafina DiGiacomo and composition with Pamela Layman Quist. She first went to Europe in 1992 with the Chancel Choir of the Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. The choir toured in Leipzig, Munich, Salzburg, Melk, and Stupava, Slovakia where they sang. This trip exposed her to a third world after Japan and the United States. She first went back to Germany on her own to visit places where Bach lived and traveled. Because of her love of Schubert's songs, she went back to Austria on her own to take photos in Austira. In 2003 she was able to combine her Bach photographs and her singing for the first time in a program called "Bach and His World", which she presented assisted by two pianists, Robin Kissinger and Margaret Budd. She presented a short program of her own Japanese song compositions, a set of four songs called ""Shiki no Uta" and two songs in a new series, Manyo no Uta. She talked about the text and showed photographs related to the Japanese texts. In 2004 she developed another Bach program, titled "Bach in Weissenfels," which focuses on Bach's hunt cantata (BWV208). She is currently putting together a program called "To be Sung on the Water" (Auf dem Wasser zu singen). The first performance of this program will be on Sunday, June 3, 2007 at Faith Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Her Austrian performance will be in Bad Gastein, Austria in July or August, 2007 with a date to be set shortly.

Outside of her professional work, she has sung in church choirs as a volunteer for many years, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ithaca, New York, and Baltimore, Maryland. She also volunteered as a program director for the Japanese/American Fellowship Society of Greater Baltimore and organized cultural events, including bus trips and stage events. Her interest in current affairs and her pacifist Christian faith have led her to form a community peace group called Friends and Neighbors for Peace in January, 2005. She organized a series of three talks on the theme of peace and justice in Januaray, 2007 at Faith Presbyterian Church. The speakers were Charles Minor on the US history of war, Dean Pappas on the Middle East, and Monica and Ed Meade on the legal and moral issues of torture.