41 Japanese male film score composers

Yasushi Akutagawa was a Japanese composer and conductor. He was born and raised in Tabata, Tokyo. His father was Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

Takanori Arisawa was a Japanese composer and arranger best known for composing the Sailor Moon anime series and Digimon series. He wrote music for the series, including its video games. Born in Tokyo, Arisawa began to learn piano at the age of 20. After graduating from Senzoku Gakuen College, Arisawa started his career in 1980 by composing "Shinjuku Transfer". He worked for the Tokyo Broadcasting System and wrote several TV dramas. From the 1990s until his death, Arisawa began composing for anime series exclusively. His work on Sailor Moon was initially based on pop music, but gradually began to change to those found in classical music. Sailor Moon was successful and Arisawa won several awards for his work. After Sailor Moon, Arisawa composed music for several shows, including the Digimon series, until his death from bladder cancer in 2005.

Ikuma Dan was a Japanese composer.

Shirō Hamaguchi is a Japanese anime composer, arranger and orchestrator. He is best known for composing music to the anime franchises Girls und Panzer, One Piece, and Oh My Goddess! and arranging/orchestrating music in the Final Fantasy series. He frequently collaborates with fellow composers Kohei Tanaka and Akifumi Tada on anime scores.

Fumio Hayasaka was a Japanese composer of classical music and film scores.

Mamoru Fujisawa , known professionally as Joe Hisaishi , is a Japanese composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. Hisaishi is also known for his piano scores.

Wataru Hokoyama is a Japanese composer, conductor, and orchestrator based in Hollywood, California. He left his birth nation of Japan at the age of 16 to attend the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan. He later attended the Cleveland Institute of Music and the USC Thornton School of Music. His works include the original scores for Bean Cake, Ocha Cups for Christmas, One, Afrika, and Soul Sacrifice.

Akira Ifukube was a Japanese classical and film music composer, best known for his works on the Godzilla franchise.

Shin'ichirō Ikebe is a Japanese composer of contemporary classical music.

Tsuneo Imahori is a Japanese guitarist and composer.

Yoshirō Vladimir Irino was a Japanese composer.

Kenji Kawai is a Japanese music composer and arranger. Known as one of the biggest names in the soundtrack world, he has worked on a wide range of mixed media productions, including anime, TV shows, films and video games. Among his credits are Toei's Kamen Rider Heisei Generations Forever, Tsui Hark's Seven Swords and Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon; Wilson Yip's Ip Man; Mamoru Oshii's films The Red Spectacles, StrayDog: Kerberos Panzer Cops, Ghost in the Shell, Mobile Police Patlabor and Avalon; the anime adaptations of Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma ½ and Maison Ikkoku; the live-action adaptation of Gantz and Hideo Nakata's films Ring, Ring 2, Chaos, Dark Water and Kaidan.

Shunsuke Kikuchi was a Japanese composer who was active from the early 1960s until 2017. He specialized in incidental music for media such as television and film. Kikuchi was regarded as one of Japan's most highly demanded film and TV composers, working principally on tokusatsu and anime productions, as well as violent action films, jidaigeki, and television dramas.

Tetsuya Komuro is a Japanese musician, songwriter and record producer. He is recognized as the most successful producer in Japanese music history and introduced dance music to the Japanese mainstream. He was also a former owner of the disco Velfarre located in Roppongi, Tokyo.

Yūji Koseki was a Japanese ryūkōka, gunka, march, fight song and film score composer. His real name was also Yūji Koseki, but its kanji was 古關勇治.

Jun Maeda is a Japanese writer and co-founder of the visual novel brand Key under Visual Arts. He is considered a pioneer of nakige visual novels, and has mainly contributed as a scenario writer, lyricist, and musical composer for the games the company produces. His style was originally inspired by James Herbert Brennan, and is influenced by Haruki Murakami's novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Teizo Matsumura was a Japanese composer and poet. Orphaned and suffering from tuberculosis, during his recovery in the early 1950s he began to write both haiku and music. He studied with Tomojiro Ikenouchi and Akira Ifukube. He was influenced by Ravel and Stravinsky, but also Asian traditions. He was Professor Emeritus of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.

Toshiro Mayuzumi was a Japanese composer known for his implementation of avant-garde instrumentation alongside traditional Japanese musical techniques. His works drew inspiration from a variety of sources ranging from jazz to Balinese music, and he was considered a pioneer in the realm of musique concrète and electronic music, being the first artist in his country to explore these techniques. In the span of his career, his works included symphonies, ballets, operas, and film scores, and was the recipient of an Otaka prize by the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Purple Medal of Merit.

Nobuyuki Nakajima – is Japanese musician, composer, arranger, pianist, who studied composition in Tokyo and Paris. Noted not only for his masterful piano, but also for his talent of composing and arranger of elegant and thrilling ensembles, based on the impressive depth and variety of his musical literacy. He has composed original soundtracks for Japanese TV series such as the NHK Taiga drama Yae no Sakura.

Keiichi Oku is a Japanese keyboardist, composer, and arranger. He was the keyboardist in the Japanese band Spectrum from 1979-1981. In 2009, he won the JASRAC International Award for the background music used in the Ashita no Nadja anime television series from Toei Animation.

Kow Otani is a Japanese composer. He is best known for creating the soundtracks for the Heisei Gamera trilogy, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, and Shadow of the Colossus.

Otomo Yoshihide is a Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist. He plays guitar, turntables, and electronics.

Shigeaki Saegusa is a Japanese composer.

Shirō Sagisu is a Japanese music producer and composer. With a career spanning over 40 years, he is best known for his works as a record producer for acts including various choir members Mike Wyzgowski, Misia, Satoshi Tomiie, and Ken Hirai. Sagisu has also worked as a film composer for several anime and films and is well known for his collaborations with Gainax, especially the soundtrack to Hideaki Anno's series Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Ichirō Saitō was a Japanese film composer.

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.

Hitoshi Sakimoto is a Japanese video game music composer and arranger. He is best known for scoring Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII, though he has composed soundtracks for over 80 other games. He began playing music and video games in elementary school, and began composing video game music for money by the time he was 16. Sakimoto's professional career began a few years later in 1988 when he started composing music professionally as a freelancer, as well as programming sound drivers for games. Five years and 40 games later, he achieved his first mainstream success with the score to Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen. In 1997, he joined Square and composed for his first international success, the score to Final Fantasy Tactics.

Masaru Sato was a Japanese composer of film scores.

Yasuaki Shimizu is a Japanese composer, saxophonist and producer. He is known for his interpretations of the music of J.S. Bach, in particular the "Cello Suites 1-6" re-arranged for and performed on tenor saxophone.

Koichi Sugiyama was a Japanese composer, conductor, and orchestrator. He was known for composing the music for the Dragon Quest franchise, along with several other video games, anime, film, and television shows. Classically trained, Sugiyama was considered a major inspiration for other Japanese game music composers and was active in composition and orchestration from the 1960s until his death from septic shock in 2021.

Yasuhiro Sugihara , better known by his stage name Sugizo, is a Japanese musician, singer-songwriter, composer and record producer. He is the lead guitarist and violinist of the rock band Luna Sea since 1989.

Masakatsu Takagi is a musician and filmmaker from Kameoka, Kyoto, Japan. He attended Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, graduating with English.

Ayuo Takahashi is a Japanese-American composer, poet, lyricist, singer and performer of plucked string instruments including guitar, bouzouki, Irish harp, Chinese zheng, Japanese koto, and medieval European psaltery. He is adept at adapting the ancient music of Japan, China, Persia, Greece and medieval Europe to create a new and original music without abandoning their strict forms, while simultaneously making them relevant to contemporary music styles. He has composed for classical ensembles including string quartets, piano, various chamber ensembles and orchestra, as well as composed, produced and performed with rock, jazz and musicians of various traditional music from around the world. He has also composed many music theater pieces, some of which has been released on CD in the United States and Japan.

Yasuharu Takanashi is a prolific Japanese composer and arranger for anime and video game series. His anime composition credits include Beyblade G-Revolution, Hell Girl, Ikki Tousen, Naruto Shippuden, Fairy Tail, Shiki, and Sailor Moon Crystal. He also composed on four Pretty Cure series: Fresh Pretty Cure!, HeartCatch PreCure!, Suite PreCure, and Smile PreCure!, as well as their related films, some of which were with composer Naoki Sato. Game music compositions include Genji: Dawn of the Samurai, Genji: Days of the Blade and J-Stars Victory VS. He also composed theme music for Pride Fighting Championships and Ultraman Max.

Tōru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu was admired for the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is known for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy and for fusing sound with silence and tradition with innovation.

Hidekazu Tanaka is a Japanese composer and arranger best known for his work for anime and video games. He was affiliated with the music production company MONACA, but has since left to be freelance.

Nobuo Uematsu is a Japanese composer and keyboardist best known for his contributions to the Final Fantasy video game series by Square Enix. A self-taught musician, he began playing the piano at the age of twelve, with English singer-songwriter Elton John as one of his biggest influences. Uematsu joined Square in 1986, where he first met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. The two later worked together on many games at the company, most notably in the Final Fantasy series. After nearly two decades with Square, Uematsu left in 2004 to create his own production company and music label, Dog Ear Records. He has since composed music as a freelancer for other games, including ones developed by Square Enix and Sakaguchi's development studio, Mistwalker.

Shigeru Umebayashi is a Japanese composer.

Zentaro Watanabe , was a Japanese musician and music producer. He debuted as a musician in 1986 as the guitarist for the band Shijin no Chi, later forming the duo Oh! Penelope with former bandmate Mutsuji Tsuji. Since the mid 1990s, Watanabe worked as a music producer, creating songs such as Chara's "Yasashii Kimochi" (1997), Hitomi's "Love 2000" and Ikimonogakari's "Hana wa Sakura Kimi wa Utsukushi" (2008). In 2000, Watanabe launched a solo project entitled Atami.

Akira Yamaoka is a Japanese musician. He is best known for composing several video games in the Silent Hill series by Konami, among other games. Yamaoka also worked as a producer on the series, as well as composing for the Silent Hill film and its sequel. Since 2010, he has been the sound director at Grasshopper Manufacture.

Seiji Yokoyama was a prolific Japanese incidental music composer from Hiroshima who was best known to the West for his work on the Space Pirate Captain Harlock and Saint Seiya series. He was a graduate student of Kunitachi College of Music.