Masaki Matsubara

Masaki Matsubara (松原正樹, June 27, 1954 – February 8, 2016) was a Japanese guitarist, composer, and arranger born in Takefu (now Echizen City), Fukui Prefecture. Trained at Yamaha's Nemu Music Academy (now Yamaha Music Academy), he moved to Tokyo in the mid-1970s, playing U.S. military base circuits before joining the Hi-fi Set's backing band in 1974 and Masaki Ueda's Push & Pull in 1978. His wife was composer and keyboardist.
From the late 1970s he became one of Japan's most in-demand session guitarists, credited on more than 10,000 recordings across nearly every genre of Japanese popular music. His playing appears on many landmark hits, alongside session and live work for Akina Nakamori, Kyoko Koizumi, Tatsuro Yamashita, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sadao Watanabe, Ayumi Hamasaki, and many others.
In 1979 he co-founded the pioneering Japanese fusion band Parachute (active 1979–1982, later reuniting for shows and tours through 2015). He went on to lead Triforce (from 1988) and Aka-Guy (from 1986), and co-founded the production unit (1997). As a solo artist he released 21 albums beginning with 流字夢サンド (1978), including the acclaimed live-oriented HUMARHYTHM series. In 2000 he founded the independent label. He died of duodenal cancer in 2016 at age 61.