Pearl was founded by Katsumi Yanagisawa - who began making music stands in Sumida, Tokyo - on April 2, 1946. In 1950, Yanagisawa turned to drum set manufacturing and named his company Pearl Industry, Ltd. In 1953, the company name was changed to "Pearl Musical Instrument Company," and manufacturing expanded to drum sets, marching drums, timpani, Latin percussion instruments, cymbals, stands, and accessories.

Yanagisawa's eldest son, Mitsuo, joined Pearl in 1957 and created a division to export Pearl products worldwide. To meet the growing global demand for drum sets following the advent of Rock and Roll, Pearl built a 1400 m2 factory in 1961 in Chiba, Japan, to produce inexpensive drum sets, also known as “STENCIL KITS” that bore the brands of more than thirty distributors.

In 1966, Pearl introduced its first professional drum set, the "President series." In the early 1970s, Pearl was distributed in the United States by Norlin, the parent company of Gibson guitars at the time.

Today, Pearl's Taiwanese operations encompass five factories whose production supplies nearly the entire global market for Pearl products. The original Chiba factory now supplies the domestic Japanese market, producing drum sets, marching drums, timpani, and chimes.

Pearl created several drum products, such as shells in the 1970s that were made of "Phenolic." Additionally, Pearl combined roto-toms and these phenolic shells to create the Vari-Pitch drum line. Among other innovations are slightly undersized shells, so that the drumhead extends over the edges, somewhat like a gong. Pearl manufactured extruded seamless acrylic shells, differing from the tab-and-seam Vistalite shells used by Ludwig. Pearl also developed the articulated tube tom arm, a design widely copied by many other drum manufacturers.