43 Japanese electronic musicians

Merzbow is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by Masami Akita , best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists.

Aoki Takamasa , is a Japanese electronic musician and producer.

Taimei Kawai, better known by his stage name Carpainter, is a Japanese electronic musician.

Keigo Oyamada , also known by his moniker Cornelius , is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper's Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career. In 1997, he released the album Fantasma, which landed him praise from American music critics, who called him a "modern-day Brian Wilson" or the "Japanese Beck". In 2007, Rolling Stone Japan named two of Oyamada's albums amongst the "100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time", with Fantasma ranking in 10th place and Camera Talk by Flipper's Guitar ranking in 35th place.

CY8ER was a Japanese idol group. Formed by Ichigo Rinahamu and Nicamoq as BPM15Q in 2015, the group expanded and had five members by the time of their dissolution in January 2021. Their music was characterized by its peculiar EDM style with an added kawaii element.

Daishi Dance is a male Japanese DJ and record producer.

Mark de Clive-Lowe is an American-based Japanese-New Zealand DJ, musician, composer and producer raised in Auckland and now based in Los Angeles, California.

Hiroyuki Fujikake, also known by his pen name Hiro Fujikake, is a Japanese composer, conductor and synthesizer player.

Ayumi Hamasaki is a Japanese singer, songwriter, record producer, actress, model, spokesperson, and entrepreneur. Through her entire career, she has written all her lyrical content, and has sometimes composed her music.

Rei Harakami was a Japanese record producer from Hiroshima. He was based in Kyoto. He was one half of the duo Yanokami along with Akiko Yano.

Kazumasa Hashimoto is a Japanese composer, mastering engineer and web designer.

Hifana is a Japanese breakbeat musical duo, consisting of KEIZOmachine! and Juicy. The group formed in 1998, in the Tokyo neighbourhood of Kichijōji.

Yuka Honda is a Japanese-American musician who resides in New York City. She is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and co-founder of the band Cibo Matto. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with a diverse array of musicians, including Petra Haden, Sean Lennon, Mike Watt, Nels Cline, Tricky, Harper Simon, Beastie Boys, Los Lobos, Brooklyn Funk Essentials, Mitchell Froom, Medeski Martin & Wood, Marc Ribot, Yoshimi P-We, Arto Lindsay, Edie Brickell, Vincent Gallo, Luscious Jackson, Dave Douglas, Bernie Worrell, and Caetano Veloso.

Haruomi Hosono , sometimes credited as Harry Hosono, is a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is considered to be one of the most influential musicians in Japanese pop music history, credited with shaping the sound of Japanese pop for decades as well as pop music outside of Japan. He also inspired genres such as city pop and Shibuya-kei, and as leader of Yellow Magic Orchestra, contributed to the development and pioneering of numerous electronic genres.

Ken Ishii (ケン・イシイ) is a Japanese DJ and record producer from Sapporo. He graduated from Hitotsubashi University. He has released work under his own name as well as under the pseudonyms: FLR, Flare, UTU, Yoga, and Rising Sun.

Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger and musician best known for her work on the soundtracks of anime films, television series, live-action films, video games, and advertisements. She was born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. She has written scores for Cowboy Bebop and its live-action adaptation, Darker than Black, Macross Plus, Turn A Gundam, The Vision of Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, Kids on the Slope, Genesis of Aquarion and Terror in Resonance, and has worked with the directors Hirokazu Kore-eda, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Shinichirō Watanabe and Shōji Kawamori. Kanno has also composed music for pop artists Maaya Sakamoto and Kyōko Koizumi. She is also a keyboardist, and is the frontwoman for the Seatbelts, who perform many of Kanno's compositions and soundtracks.

Kitarō (喜多郎), born Masanori Takahashi , is a Japanese recording artist, composer, record producer, and arranger noted for his electronic-instrumental music, and is often associated with and regarded as one of the most prominent musical acts of new-age music. He won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album for Thinking of You (1999), with a record 16 nominations in the same category. He received a Golden Globe Award for the original score to Heaven & Earth (1993).

Yuzo Koshiro is a Japanese music composer and president of the game development company Ancient. He is often regarded as one of the most influential innovators in chiptune and video game music, producing music in a number of genres, including various electronic genres, experimental, symphonic, hip hop, jazz, and synth-rock. Koshiro and his sister Ayano also founded the game development company Ancient in 1990.

Közi is a Japanese musician, singer-songwriter and DJ. He is best known as one of the guitarists for the 1990s visual kei rock band Malice Mizer. After they went on indefinite hiatus in 2001, he formed the industrial rock duo Eve of Destiny and also started a solo career. Közi is currently in the bands Dalle, XA-VAT, ZIZ and Vamquet, while occasionally performing solo shows.

Olivia Lufkin, professionally known as Olivia, is a Japanese-American bilingual singer and songwriter. She was born in Japan to the daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father. Her two younger siblings are Jeffrey Lufkin, a musician she regularly collaborates with and Caroline Lufkin, an independent musician. Lufkin began her solo career after singing in the Japanese girl group, D&D. She gained mainstream success in 2006 after creating songs for the fictional band Trapnest under the alias of Olivia Inspi' Reira (Trapnest). The songs were used for the popular anime adaptation of Nana.

Hideki Matsutake is a Japanese composer, arranger, and computer programmer. He is known for his pioneering work in electronic music and particularly music programming, as the assistant of Isao Tomita during the early 1970s and as the "fourth member" of the band Yellow Magic Orchestra during the late 1970s to early 1980s.

Meg is a Japanese recording artist, record producer, model and fashion designer from Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. She is signed with Starchild Records, a division of King Records. Between 2003 and 2013 she created over a dozen albums and two dozen singles. She started a fashion brand called "Cheryl" in 2004, and both a cosmetic brand, "baw," and a restaurant, café Maison de Ruban, in 2014.

Yasutaka Nakata is a Japanese musician, DJ, record producer, songwriter, composer, and arranger. He formed the band Capsule in 1997 with vocalist Toshiko Koshijima and himself as composer and record producer when both were 17. The band debuted in 2001 with the song "Sakura".

Shinichi Osawa , better known by his stage name Mondo Grosso, is a Japanese musician, DJ, record producer and composer currently signed onto Avex Trax's Rhythm Zone label. Previously he was signed to Sony Music Japan's FEARLESS RECORDS division and released albums under the title of Mondo Grosso. Over the course of his career he has worked in genres from acid jazz to house, with strong influences of underground club music, though his recent work has been in the genre of electro house. HMV Japan rated Mondo Grosso at #95 on their "Top 100 Japanese Pop Artists" and Shinichi Osawa is ranked as Japan's #1 electro house DJ and Japan's #3 overall DJ by TopDeejays.com.

Pizzicato Five was a Japanese pop band formed in Tokyo in 1979 by multi-instrumentalists Yasuharu Konishi and Keitarō Takanami. After some personnel changes in the late 1980s, the band gained international fame as a duo consisting of Konishi and vocalist Maki Nomiya. With their music blending together 1960s pop, jazz and synth-pop, the group were a prominent component in the Shibuya-kei movement of the 1990s.

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.

Shigeru Ishihara, better known by the stage name DJ Scotch Egg, is a Japanese producer of chiptune/gabba music based in Berlin, Germany.

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.

Taku Takahashi is a Japanese hip hop recording artist, DJ and record producer who debuted in 1997 as a record producer of the hip hop group M-Flo. The group rose to prominence in the early 2000s, with hit singles such as "How You Like Me Now?" and "Come Again." Takahashi was also a member of Avex's 20th anniversary dance music project Ravex, and has produced songs for musicians such as Crystal Kay, Ami Suzuki and Rie Fu, and remixes for Hikaru Utada and Ayumi Hamasaki. He formed the record labels Tachytelic Records and TCY Recording.

Yukihiro Takahashi is a Japanese musician, singer, record producer and actor, who is best known internationally as the drummer and lead vocalist of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, and as the former drummer of the Sadistic Mika Band. He is currently a member of the group METAFIVE.

Nobukazu Takemura is a Japanese musician and artist. Born in Hirakata, Osaka in August 1968, he became interested in music at a young age by listening to the radio, and began to make music at home with a tape recorder and keyboard. During high school, after a record store job that exposed him to jazz and hip-hop, he had regular gigs in the clubs of Osaka and Kyoto as a battle DJ before launching his music career. Takemura's music career has seen him cover a wide range of genres and styles within short periods of time. Beginning his career in hip-hop and jazz, Takemura later entered into a prolific period as an electronic musician, exploring genres such as glitch, drum and bass and minimalism. Takemura's most recent work has included chamber music and performance art.

Towa Tei is a Japanese artist, record producer, and DJ. Born in Yokohama, Japan, Towa debuted as a member of Deee-Lite, from the US label Elektra Records in 1990 and shot to fame via their international hit single, "Groove Is In the Heart". He made his solo debut with the album Future Listening! in 1994. He has since relocated back from New York to rural Nagano prefecture in Japan.

Soichi Terada is a Japanese electronic music composer, best known for his work in the Ape Escape video game series. He started producing music in 1989 as well as remixing singers such as Nami Shimada. He and fellow producer Shinichiro Yokota formed Far East Recording in 1990, releasing various albums and singles. In 1999, after releasing Sumo Jungle, he was given an opportunity to compose for Ape Escape.

Satoshi Tomiie is a Japanese DJ, record producer and musician. Since the late 1980s, he has been at the forefront of the global house music movement.

Isao Tomita , also known mononymously as Tomita, was a Japanese composer, regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music and space music, and as one of the most famous producers of analog synthesizer arrangements. In addition to creating note-by-note realizations, Tomita made extensive use of the sound-design capabilities of his instrument, using synthesizers to create new sounds to accompany and enhance his electronic realizations of acoustic instruments. He also made effective use of analog music sequencers and the Mellotron, and featured futuristic science-fiction themes, while laying the foundations for synth-pop music and trance-like rhythms. Many of his albums are electronic versions and adaptations of famous classical music pieces. He received four Grammy Award nominations for his 1974 album based on music by Claude Debussy, Snowflakes Are Dancing.

Yann Tomita is a Japanese musician, composer, record producer, writer, and steelpan player based in Tokyo. In Japan during the 1980s and 1990s, he pioneered various music genres, including hip hop, dub, acid jazz, exotica, and electronic music. He is the first professional Japanese steelpan player, first Japanese hip hop producer, and the president of the Audio Science Laboratory record label, which he founded.

Hikaru Utada , who is also known by the mononym Utada, is a Japanese-American singer-songwriter and producer. Born in the United States to Japanese parents, record producer Teruzane Utada and enka singer Keiko Fuji, Utada began to write music and lyrics at an early age and often traveled to Tokyo as a result of her father's job. Eventually, a recording contract with Toshiba-EMI was signed. Under the stage name Cubic U, she released an English-language debut album Precious in early 1998, but it was a commercial failure. In the following year, heavily influenced by R&B and dance-pop, a Japanese-language debut First Love was released and became an immediate success. Backed by the success of singles "Automatic", "Time Will Tell", and "Movin' On Without You", the album sold two million copies in its first week in Japan, topped the Oricon charts for six non-consecutive weeks and went on to sell six million more throughout the rest of 1999. First Love eventually became the country's best-selling album of all time.

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.

Hoshiko Yamane is a Japanese violinist, composer and performer, based in Berlin. She has been a member of Tangerine Dream since 2011.

Toko Yasuda is a Japanese singer, songwriter, keyboardist, guitarist, and bassist, best known as a member of New York indie rock band Enon and as a musician in live St. Vincent performances.

Susumu Yokota was a Japanese composer. He released several albums under pseudonyms including Stevia, Ebi, and others.

Mademoiselle Yulia is a Japanese DJ and musician, associated with Tokyo electro scene. She debuted in 2008 as a DJ, and in 2011 as a singer, with her debut album Mademoworld.