- 2025-11-06 *
This album art right here.
Surrounded by other miscellaneous YouTube videos attempting to gain my attention, this one caught my eye and made me stop for a few seconds. The date was July 28, 2018. It was the second thumbnail on the homepage. An unfamiliar Japanese name with a video titled, “An Insatiable High 1977”.
To say this album changed me as a person is an understatement. Prior to this, I hadn’t really delved into the genre of jazz fusion before. I had a few encounters with it thanks to some songs on rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band1, but this one hit me in so many ways emotionally.
I remember where I was and what I was doing at the time of …
- 2025-11-06 *
This album art right here.
Surrounded by other miscellaneous YouTube videos attempting to gain my attention, this one caught my eye and made me stop for a few seconds. The date was July 28, 2018. It was the second thumbnail on the homepage. An unfamiliar Japanese name with a video titled, “An Insatiable High 1977”.
To say this album changed me as a person is an understatement. Prior to this, I hadn’t really delved into the genre of jazz fusion before. I had a few encounters with it thanks to some songs on rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band1, but this one hit me in so many ways emotionally.
I remember where I was and what I was doing at the time of my first listen. I was sitting on my bed at my Dad’s house, cheap Poundland earphones on hand, 2013 ASUS laptop that could barely run Windows 8.12, having two tabs of a forum I used to frequently visit in the background. (Rest easy, FFShrine).
How Takanaka is able to convey such emotions through the use of his guitar is incredible. His diverse use of pedals and effects that he uses help set a mood, whether it’s melancholic tracks like Good (Bad?) Old Days, Crystal Memories, Coral Reef Fairy, or more upbeat funky tracks like Sexy Dance, Saudade, Ready To Fly. (I could list countless more). He’s mentioned in the past how he almost thinks of the guitar being a voice, and that he can’t really sing too well, so he uses his guitar to be a melody of sorts. He speaks with his hands, but sings with his guitar.
Since I found out about Takanaka in 2018, I’ve seen the rise of his albums being recommended to folk at a greater scale. I think it was around the start of 2020 that his 1979 compilation album, “All Of Me” started to gain traction on YouTube. This was prior to it being available on streaming services, even though it’s just a selection of songs from his first four studio albums.
Nowadays it has had a few vinyl repressings and is very much sought after. You can’t deny how amazing the album art for it is though! The island behind him is Yoron Islands. I’ve seen many people interpret the image as him ascending instead of falling whilst skydiving; the power of his aura manages to keep him stable in the air for a perfect photograph.
Getting back on track from the previous paragraph before I started going on about his very much sought after compilation album - I want to say around the end of 2022, early 2023, is when five particular videos of his started to boost in the YouTube algorithm. That being:
- 2008 Super Live, particularly the Beleza Pula/Taj Mahal surfboard guitar portion
- 2011 Super Live
- 2012 Super Live
- his magnificent performance of his 1981 album Rainbow Goblins Live at Budokan
- and finally, T2Norway’s excellent video about the Rainbow Legend.
This is how many people found out about Takanaka in the West, and what an introduction to the man’s music and vibes!
Upon looking into his 2011 and 2012 live performances (2022 at this time), I noticed that a lot of his earlier and even recent live performances were not available on YouTube for some reason? I tried searching common terms in Japanese with a translator, to no avail.
I took it upon myself to fill that void of live performances on the Internet. And so the hunt began.
His 1981/1982 Super Live shows were included as part of a 2021 compilation boxset. I uploaded them on YouTube (this was before I looked into properly encoding them with a program, rather than just applying a deinterlacing method with Sony Vegas). And that’s kind of where I started. Many first-party and out of print releases later, I have everything released. Except one. It’s a particular DVD from 2011 with two entries on it, in which you could only obtain if you got VIP tickets for that particular live show. The white whale will be found. Some day.
A few of his early 2000s shows were available straight from CDJapan, so I started there. From uploading the 2003 Super Live, I had a very kind Japanese individual who helped translate the “MC” (stage banter) in that show. Someone asked in the comments if a translation could happen for a particular section with a bit of Japanese, and they showed up a few hours later! Completely unprompted!
Since then, they have very kindly translated every single Super Live MC dialogue that I’ve uploaded on YouTube. I cannot thank them enough for what they’ve done! I’m not sure if they want to be named, so I’m going to keep them anonymous in this piece of text - they know who they are!
Over the years of hunting down his live performances released on DVD/Blu-ray, I wanted to also complete his entire studio album discography on CD. And a long, winding rabbit hole began for that... I started off with An Insatiable High seeing as it was the first album I listened to. I was going to buy the rest of his 1976-1984 “Kitty Records” discography period individually on CD, but I then discovered a soon to be holy grail.
In 2004, Takanaka’s record label, Lagoon Records3, put together a CD boxset titled “Takanaka The Box Kitty Years”. Which originally released as a 20th anniversary since Takanaka recorded with Kitty Records. The boxset is a compilation of his studio albums from 1976 to 1984, featuring 2004 remasters taken from the original master tapes.
Information about this boxset online was extremely scarce. There were a few entries online from around the time of release. It even had a CDJapan release at some point for international shipping, but apart from that, very little online presence from when I was looking into potentially purchasing it through the use of a proxy.
I used Surugaya and found it listed for MSRP, £135 used. I had to use a Japan proxy service (ZenMarket). After confirming with the team in messages to ensure that they can process the item and ship it to me, I went ahead and added the necessary funds to allow the team to purchase it on my behalf. After going through the usual Japan proxy service routine, this time I paid extra for “Added Protection” - a week later it arrived to me! (...After I paid customs on delivery due to the total value of the package being over £130, thanks UK Government).
It’s one of my favourite things I have in my possession. I may be one of only a few people outside of Japan to physically own it, which makes it really special. The content of that box set is available to download from the Internet Archive, and Google Drive!
I know there’s probably going to be some folks out there (particularly on social media sites from what I’ve seen, more-so younger people), that want to almost “gatekeep” his music from the masses. Which I find very funny. If it weren’t for the Internet, I wouldn’t have even found out about Takanaka’s existence, and that’s a sad thing to think about! I wouldn’t be here writing this blog about how much his music means to me and other international fans.
Let folks gush about Asian/international artists! Preventing people from listening to great music benefits no-one. It’s amazing to see that Anri and Taeko Onuki will be performing in Los Angeles next year too, and that’s all thanks to the internet. Even predicting this like 3-4 years ago would be far-fetched. It’s genuinely lovely to see Japanese artists embrace the overseas hype and perform in different countries now. So many people overseas share stories of discovering said artists through the Internet, and they can now add on they saw them perform live!
Masayoshi Takanaka himself along with his great ensemble of band members will be performing at London in 2026! (No dates or venues are confirmed at the time of this writing). To say I’m excited to finally see one of my favourite musicians live in person is an understatement. And once again, it’s all thanks to the wild world of the YouTube algorithm.
Thank you YouTube algorithm, you’re not so bad sometimes.
No AI of any sort was used in writing this up.
I like reading text written for humans, by humans.
footnotes:
A song like Do You Feel Like We Do? from Guitar Hero 5 as an example.↩ 1.
As janky as my craptop was, it was my first ever personal laptop. Integrated graphics; dual core; running games at 480p and messing around with .ini files.↩ 1.
After 1984, he changed his record label to EMI Records until 1999. And then in 2000, he created his own record label called Lagoon Records which has released CD albums, DVDs and Blu-rays of his live performances. They still release yearly Blu-ray performances to this day.↩