林哲司

Tetsuji Hayashi (Japanese: 林 哲司, Hepburn: Hayashi Tetsuji, born August 20, 1949) is a Japanese composer, singer-songwriter, and arranger known for his influential contributions to the development of J-pop and city pop during the 1980s. He was exposed to Western pop music from an early age, sparking his passion for music. He honed his skills as a composer and arranger, and in 1978, he composed Mariya Takeuchi's debut album, Beginning, followed by her hit single September in 1979 and Mayonaka no Door for Miki Matsubara that same year. His collaborations extended to other prominent artists such as S. Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe, Masaki Ueda and Junichi Inagaki. Winning the 1972 Chile Music Festival opened the door for his debut as a singer / songwriter the following year in 1973. Since then he has concentrated on hi work as a composer. His melodies and sound, based on western pop music, immediately received high levels of praise overseas. “If I Have To Go Away”, written for the British rock group, Jigsaw, became a hit in the west appearing on both the American and UK charts. After that, he moved his stage to Japan introducing numerous hit songs into the 80’s music scene. Releasing over 1,500 songs including hit songs of Japan’s most popular pop singers including the singles, “September” by Mariya Takeuchi, “The Color of Melancholy” by Masaki Ueda, “I Can’t Stop the Loneliness” by Anri, “Never Ending Summer” by Kiyotaka Sugiyama and the Omega Tribe and “Beach Club Memories” by Junichi Inagaki, his music set the direction for today’s J-POP. These hit songs led to his shining as the recipient of the Japan Record Grand Prix which is the equivalent of America’s Grammy Award, the Musical Composition Grand Prize, sponsored by the Japan Composer’s Association and numerous other awards. He also set the record for the most annual sales of single compositions. Not only a pop song composer, he has done well composing orchestrated movie and TV music as well and has released numerous soundtrack albums. Some of his more famous works include the movies “Hachi-ko”, the original of the recent remake “Hachi: A Dog’s Story” starring Richard Gere and “Fishing Fool’s Diary 13” from the nationally acclaimed movie series, TV dramas receiving high viewer ratings such as “Life is Good”, “Brand” and many others. As a producer he has provided many songs in the area of theme music and event music including the official cheer song of Shimizu S-Pulse, the J League soccer team, “NEW!! Wakafuji National Sports Festival” for the National Sports Festival, etc. In recent years he has begun to implement classical compositions and Japanese musical pieces and his composing activities with these is also becoming divergent. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.