George Otsuka was born Keiji Otsuka (大塚敬治) in Tokyo on April 6, 1937. He began playing professionally toward the end of the 1950s in Sadao Watanabe's quartet, and his earliest documented recording credit is from 1959, on a record by Danny Iida and His Paradise Kings. Through the 1960s he worked for several years with Hidehiko "Sleepy" Matsumoto, and appeared on sessions with Masao Yagi, Akira Miyazawa and the Swing Journal All Stars, establishing himself as a first-call drummer in Tokyo before he turned 30.

By 1967 he was leading his own trio, with Hideo Ichikawa on piano and Masaoki Terakawa on bass. That group recorded three albums in three years, titled in sequence. Page 1 was cut in public at seven in the evening on October 14, 1967 at Teichiku Kaikan Studio and released on Takt. Page 2 followed on July 22, 1968 on Columbia's Takt Jazz Series. Last Summer 〈Page 3〉 completed the set in 1969, with Ichikawa adding organ and Terakawa electric bass.

Between the second and third of those came the record that best explains his standing. On December 9, 1968, at Hikohan Studio in Tokyo, Otsuka recorded Groovin' With My Soul Brother with Roy Haynes, released on Victor World Group and credited to Roy Haynes & the George Otsuka Trio. Both men played drums, with Ichikawa on piano and Yoshio Suzuki on bass, and the sleeve instructs the listener where to find each drummer: Haynes on the right channel, Otsuka on the left. The opening track is "Ode to Roy." In 1970 Otsuka was one of four drummers in the Four Drums ensemble that toured Japan, alongside Jack DeJohnette, Roy Haynes and Mel Lewis.

He expanded to a quintet in 1971 with Sea Breeze on Union, bringing in Shunzo Ohno on trumpet and flugelhorn, Takao Uematsu on saxophones, Ichikawa on electric piano and Takashi Mizuhashi on bass. The record moves between originals and a reading of "Fool on the Hill," and it became one of the entry points for later listeners working backward into Japanese jazz.

A run on Three Blind Mice followed, which is a large part of why his catalog was rediscovered. Go On was recorded at Aoi Studio on November 28 and 29, 1972, with Mabumi Yamaguchi joining on saxophones and Toshiyuki Daitoku on piano and Rhodes. In Concert! was recorded live at Kosei Nenkin Hall on October 11, 1973. You Are My Sunshine returned to a trio format on October 31, 1974, with Ichikawa back on piano and Naosuke Miyamoto on bass.

Two months before that trio date, on August 6, 1973, Otsuka had appeared at Iino Hall in Tokyo for a live recording released as Jackeyboard on Trio Records, co-billed with Jack DeJohnette and bassist Mitsuaki Furuno. DeJohnette, one of the most celebrated drummers of his generation, played piano and melodica on the date. Otsuka played the drums.

Loving You George was recorded on July 19, 1975 at Nemu no Sato and remixed that October, with Fumio Karashima on keyboards, Shozo Sasaki on saxophones, Furuno on bass and Norio Ohno on percussion. The same group recorded Physical Structure for Three Blind Mice at Epicurus Studio on February 11, 1976, with Karashima adding synthesizer. Both albums close on Coltrane compositions, "Miles Mode" and "Naima" respectively.

In May 1978 he reversed the usual direction of travel and recorded in New York. Maracaibo Cornpone was cut at Sound Ideas Studio on May 25, 26 and 29, 1978, mixed there on June 1 and remixed at Onkio Haus in Tokyo on July 16, with Miroslav Vitous on bass, John Abercrombie and Yoshiaki Masuo on guitars, Masabumi Kikuchi on keyboards and Naná Vasconcelos on percussion. That November, back in Tokyo, he recorded Guardian Angels over three days at Onkio Haus with Vitous directing, John Scofield on guitar, Mabumi Yamaguchi on saxophone and a 23-year-old Kenny Kirkland on keyboards, three years before Kirkland joined Wynton Marsalis. Four Wings, recorded in October 1979 with Hidehiko Matsumoto, Kunihiko Sugano and Isao Suzuki, closed out the decade.

Across his career he was the drummer visiting musicians worked with in Japan, a list that includes Roy Haynes, Hampton Hawes, Chris Connor, Jack DeJohnette, Phil Woods, Miroslav Vitous, John Scofield, Kenny Kirkland, Elvin Jones, Richie Beirach, Nana Vasconcelos and Reggie Workman. He also played on records that became landmarks for other leaders, among them Isao Suzuki's Blow Up on Three Blind Mice in 1973 and Terumasa Hino's Hip Seagull in 1978, and on three Fumio Karashima albums between 1977 and 1981.

Decades later his seventies catalog found a second audience through the Japanese jazz reissue wave. He appears on J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan 1969-1984 (2018), the Wax Poetics Japan compilations (2011), The Three Blind Mice 45 Box (2012) and both 2022 volumes of Japanese Jazz Spectacle.

George Otsuka passed away on March 10, 2020 at a hospital in Suginami, Tokyo. He was 82, and had been recording for more than sixty years.

Otsuka came up in the hard-bop idiom and never entirely left it, even as his own records moved through jazz-funk and fusion in the 1970s. His playing is characterised by a light, propulsive ride cymbal and an unusually conversational relationship with the piano, which is the quality that made the long partnership with Hideo Ichikawa work across three trio albums and the Roy Haynes date.

The Haynes record is the most direct evidence of his sensibility, because the stereo separation makes his choices audible next to one of the acknowledged masters of the instrument. Otsuka plays with less of Haynes's snap and more sustain, filling space rather than punctuating it, and the contrast is the point of the record.

As a bandleader his instinct ran toward front lines with two horns and a keyboard player willing to use electric instruments, which is how the quintet records of the early 1970s ended up in jazz-funk territory without ever fully committing to a groove-first approach. The Three Blind Mice albums keep an audiophile clarity and long solos alongside the funk rhythms, which is precisely the combination that later crate-diggers responded to. His habit of closing albums with Coltrane compositions, "Miles Mode" on Loving You George and "Naima" on Physical Structure, points to where his loyalties stayed.