Hiroshi Murakami (村上寛, Murakami Hiroshi in Japanese order) was born on 14 March 1948 in Hamacho, in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo's Chuo ward, the youngest of five children. His father ran a kimono shop that served geisha, and an aunt kept a traditional restaurant. He says the first drummer he saw up close was a friend of one of his older brothers, a man named Hasegawa, who came to the house and tapped on things with brushes. Murakami started lessons with him in high school. At Seijo Gakuen he played in a rock band called Susie Q, covering the Rolling Stones and the Animals, and entered the first Yamaha Light Music Contest in the rock division. The pianist Takehiro Honda, already a working professional, was talked into joining them; the band came second in a year when no first prize was awarded.

That meeting set the course. In 1967, still a teenager and enrolled at Seijo University, Murakami made his professional debut in Honda's trio, playing daytime sessions at Shinjuku Pit Inn and, in the evenings, a cabaret in Fussa, in western Tokyo, where the audience was mostly American servicemen. He later studied with Masahiko Togashi and took lessons at the Yamaha school in Ebisu, where the pianist Masabumi Kikuchi also taught. His first drum heroes were Roy Haynes, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones and Jack DeJohnette. A live recording of Honda's band at Kinokuniya Hall in Tokyo on 26 September 1969, with Kohsuke Mine on alto saxophone, was issued in 2022 as Destruction and Lyricism, and the Honda trio album Hey Jude (Columbia, 1970) dates from the same period.

In 1969 he joined Kikuchi's sextet, which also had Mine, and in 1970 and 1971 he was on the albums that made the Japanese jazz boom of those years. The first was Eastward, recorded in February 1970 at Kawaguchi Shimin Kaikan in Saitama with Kikuchi on piano and the American bassist Gary Peacock, who was then living in Japan. Murakami has said it was his first recording session, that the three rehearsed at Kikuchi's home, and that Peacock taught him about feel, about relaxing the body while playing, and about the basics of polyrhythm. They went on to make five albums together over about sixteen months: Eastward, shakuhachi master Hozan Yamamoto's Silver World (recorded in October 1970), the Peacock quartet record Voices (5 April 1971, with Togashi as a second drummer), First Encounter with the pianist Mal Waldron (8 March 1971) and Sadao Watanabe's Paysages (22 June 1971).

Between those dates he was everywhere. On 4 and 5 August 1970 he drummed on Mine, the first record released by the label Three Blind Mice, led by Kohsuke Mine. He played on Kikuchi's Poo-Sun and the sextet's Re-confirmation and Masabumi Kikuchi In Concert. When Waldron toured Japan in 1971 he was the drummer for One for Lady and Left Alone with the singer Kimiko Kasai, and on 5 August 1971 he was one of two drummers (with Yoshiyuki Nakamura) behind Joe Henderson, Terumasa Hino, Kikuchi, Mine and bassist Yoshio Suzuki at Tokyo Toshi Center Hall, a concert issued as In Concert. Henderson and the singer Johnny Hartman were among the visiting Americans he accompanied in these years. In 1972 he spent three or four months in Watanabe's quartet, then returned to Kikuchi until the pianist left for New York in 1973.

Murakami followed that year and stayed in the United States for roughly three years, with a short return to Japan for a Watanabe tour. Before leaving he recorded Suzuki's first leader album, Friends, on 10 and 11 May 1973 with Mine and Honda. In New York he stayed first with the guitarist Yoshiaki Masuo, lived in lower Manhattan and later uptown, and played weekend gigs. In interviews he recalls hearing Tony Williams at the Village Vanguard and the electric Miles Davis band, and finding the New York scene freer and more enjoyable than Tokyo's.

Back in Japan he worked with the pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto (Daahoud, recorded in November 1975, and Blues to East, July 1977), with Kunihiko Sugano (Shiny Stockings, The Shadow of Your Smile and Date in Date, 1976 and 1977) and in Tee & Company, whose Sonnet was cut for Three Blind Mice on 13 November 1977 with Masaru Imada, Nobuyoshi Ino and Takao Uematsu. In April 1978 he made his first record as a leader, Dancing Sphinx (Showboat), recorded at Rockwell Studio in Minami Hakone and credited to Hiroshi Murakami and Dancing Sphinx. He wrote five of the six pieces, Kiyoshi Sugimoto plays guitar, and the sleeve thanks Honda and Mine for taking part; the pianist Mikio Masuda is named among the players in Murakami's interview with ARBAN magazine. The album's "Phoebus" was reissued in 2021 on BBE's J Jazz Volume 3.

The same year Honda and Mine formed the fusion band Native Son, and Murakami was its drummer. Its self-titled debut was recorded in November and December 1978 and released by JVC in 1979, with Tamio Kawabata on electric bass and Motonobu Ohde on guitar, and Savanna Hot-line followed the same year. The live double album Coast to Coast (1980) was taped at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles and the Bottom Line and Seventh Avenue South in New York, with Hiroshi Fukumura on trombone. Murakami composed two pieces on Shining (1982) and played on the Polydor album Resort, recorded in April 1983, where he also arranged one piece.

In 1989 he formed Four Sounds, a quartet with the pianist Fumio Itabashi, the bassist Ino and Mine on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, and produced its records for the T-Friends label: Live at Mobs (1989) and Ma-Pa (recorded April 1990), which includes two of his compositions. He is also credited as producer of The Hokkaido Band's 5 Minutes Ago (1991). From 1997 to 1999 he was the regular drummer on NHK-BS's jazz-club television programme Jazz Kissa. Later work includes the pianist Kei Akagi's Palette (2001) with Ino and Mine, the bassist Tsutomu Okada's quartet records Happiness (2007) and Zan Zaux (2010), Masahiko Satoh's trio on Based on Bach (2009) and later releases, and Mine's With Your Soul (2011). His second album as a leader, VIVO! (2006), is all his own compositions, with Mine, Satoh and the bassist Shinichi Kato.

He turned 78 this March. His own blog schedules, which run into 2018, show him leading a band, a trio and a quartet at clubs in Tokyo and Yokohama, and his name is on Satoh trio releases issued as late as 2023.

Murakami came up in the Tokyo jazz boom of 1969 to 1973, and his first drum heroes were Roy Haynes, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones and Jack DeJohnette. The partnership with Gary Peacock shaped him more than any teacher: in his own account Peacock taught him to feel the tempo, to play without needless tension in the body, and the basics of polyrhythm, and he calls those two years a major asset to his career. Discogs files Eastward, First Encounter and Voices as post-bop (with Voices also tagged avant-garde), which is the setting for his early playing behind Kikuchi's piano.

From 1978 the catalogue turns to fusion and jazz-funk. Dancing Sphinx is filed under jazz-funk and fusion, and Native Son, built on Honda's Fender Rhodes and clavinet and Mine's tenor and soprano saxophones, is the band most listeners know him from. He has said that while he was in the United States he heard the band Stuff and Steve Gadd, and that the same kind of music was being played in Japan when he came home. The later records, Four Sounds in 1989 and 1990, the Okada quartet and the Satoh trio, are mainstream acoustic jazz in which he plays standards and originals alike.