Isamu Ohashi (大橋勇武, Ōhashi Isamu) was a Tokyo-born fusion guitarist who turned professional at sixteen, spent more than two decades in the band of the Latin-fusion pianist Naoya Matsuoka, and wrote "Battle for the Championship," the theme Fuji TV used to introduce the starting grid on its Formula 1 broadcasts in the early 1990s. His birth name was 大橋勇. He performed as 大橋イサム (Isamu) in his rock-band years, as 大橋勇 through the 1990s and 2000s, and from 2008, by his own announcement, as 大橋勇武. Discogs and most English-language credits spell him Isamu Ohashi. He passed away in April 2023, aged 55.

He was born on 14 May 1967 in Ota ward, Tokyo, and took up the guitar at thirteen. The players he named as influences were Kazumi Watanabe, Casiopea and T-Square from the Japanese fusion scene, together with Yellow Magic Orchestra, Journey, TOTO and Gary Moore. In 1983 he entered Tokyo Metropolitan Denenchofu High School and, in the same year, became a first-year student at the music school メーザー・ハウス, where his teacher was Masahiro Andoh, then the leader of T-Square. On New Year's Eve 1983 he was pulled into a T-Square show at Roppongi Pit Inn at short notice, and Japanese Wikipedia dates his professional debut to that night, at sixteen.

In 1987, at nineteen, he made his major-label debut in the rock band Pearl, as the guitarist billed Kazuya. The band released two albums and a mini-album while he was in it, and he left after its 1988 Around and Around tour. Discogs credits him as guitarist and backing vocalist on Pearl's Second (CBS/Sony, 1987) and as guitarist and arranger of "Young Blood" on She's Fresh (CBS/Sony, 1989). The rock years were a short chapter, and what followed was a career in instrumental fusion.

That career started in 1991. He formed the band Slap Up Slap, based at Roppongi Pit Inn, and in the same year auditioned for the Naoya Matsuoka Group and replaced the guitarist Akira Wada. He announced the audition result from the stage at a Slap Up Slap gig on 24 July 1991. Japanese Wikipedia says he remained a guitarist in Matsuoka's projects until the pianist's death in 2014. On disc, Discogs credits him on seven Matsuoka albums, from Marathon (Warner Bros., 1991) and Dance Upon a Time (1992) through Mineral (1993), Venus wo Sagase (1994), Coelacanth Dream (1996) and The Earth Beams (1999) to An Affair to Remember (2002), plus the El Viento single (1991). In the same early years he was one of the friends invited onto T-Square sessions: he plays acoustic guitar on "Midnight Lover" on Refreshest (Sony, 1991), and electric guitar on "Salamander" on Solitude (Sony, 1994).

The piece that carried his name beyond the club circuit came out of Fuji TV's Formula 1 coverage. "Battle for the Championship" appeared on the 1993 compilation Images - Formula 1 World Championship '93 (Pony Canyon, released 12 May 1993), billed to Isamu Ohashi and Tail to Nose, an album that also carries T-Square's name and a long list of studio players. Japanese Wikipedia reports that the tune served as the starting-grid introduction in the 1993 and 1994 seasons, and that a second piece, "Battle and Chase," took over for 1995. A second album followed, Truth 2000 - Formula 1 World Championship (Pony Canyon, 1994), credited to Ohashi and Jun Sato, which opens with "Battle and Chase." He contributed "Trapped in the Race" (as composer, arranger and guitarist) to the 1995 Impressions volume as well.

Alongside the television work he led his own units. In 1993 he formed the guitar-and-vocal duo L'eclipse with the vocalist 堀兼久; its song "Re-Play" was the opening theme of the anime Tsuyoshi Shikkari Shinasai in 1994, and the group made two albums, L'Eclipse (1994) and Double Vision (1996). In 1996 he took the guitar solo on the eleventh track (記憶の街) of Dispensation by the fusion duo Jimsaku with the singer Keiko Ito. The title of his band Core Zone first appears as a composition credit of his on the saxophonist Takeshi Itoh's Visions (Atlantic, 1992); Itoh's 1996 album T.K. Breeze (EastWest) carries Ohashi's electric guitar on "A Little Python" and acoustic guitar on "Natural Happen."

In 1997 he played on and co-produced a track of the bassist Mitsuru Sutoh's first leader album, Favor of My Friends (Village Records), a live session on which Akira Jimbo was the drummer. In 1998 Village Records issued his own live album No Edit (released 19 September 1998), five long pieces from a live recording at Pit Inn, played with players from the group Dimension: the guitarist Takashi Masuzaki, the saxophonist Kazuki Katsuta and Sutoh on bass. Alongside this he did a good deal of pop session and support work: Kenji Sawada's backing band in 1995 and 1996 and T.M.Revolution's from 1998 to 2001, and guitar on Gackt's Mars (2000). Discogs also credits him on a Cantopop album by Leon Lai (2001) and the saxophonist Kaori Kobayashi's debut Solar (JVC, 2005), where he is the guitarist on four tracks.

His first studio album under his own name arrived late. Moon on the Water (水面の月) was released on 9 June 2013 on the Sound D Label (SDL-0514), ten tracks composed and produced by Ohashi, with the keyboardists Yoichi Nozaki, Toshiaki Otsubo and Keizoh Kawano each arranging part of the programme. At the release concert on 1 July 2013 he re-formed Core Zone, which he had founded in 1999, with Nozaki on keyboards, a new bassist and Hiroyuki Noritake of T-Square on drums. He also taught guitar at the Takaido Music School and Studio in Tokyo. The Japanese jazz database lists him in a monthly Friday-night quartet date at Noge JUNK in Yokohama from March to July 2022, which is the last activity on record.

His death was announced on 19 April 2023 by friends in the music world on social media, and Sutoh posted a tribute on his blog the next day. Sutoh wrote that Ohashi, three years his junior, had debuted at the same time as he had, and that they had been a kind of comrade, rival and younger brother at once. He called Ohashi a guitarist full of song and with outstanding technique, and he hoped listeners who had not heard him in real time would seek out the recordings. A wake was held on 23 April and the funeral on 24 April at Yoyohata Funeral Hall in Tokyo; the notice board at the door read, in the style of a live-house sign, "Isamu Ohashi, Gt., Last Live, Thank You."

Ohashi belonged to the generation of Japanese fusion guitarists who learned the idiom from Kazumi Watanabe, Casiopea and T-Square, and who were mentored by those bands' members: Andoh, T-Square's leader, was his teacher, and he was on the stage of a T-Square concert at sixteen. His tone and phrasing, as heard on "Battle for the Championship," are those of a melodic lead player more than an improviser's guitarist, which fits Sutoh's description of a guitarist rich in song and technique. The Latin-fusion setting of Naoya Matsuoka's group, with its horn arrangements and percussion, gave him a long run as the guitar voice in a Latin jazz-leaning band, and Discogs files several of those Matsuoka albums under Latin jazz.

His own releases are classed as jazz by Discogs, with a fusion style tag on three of the four leader albums (Images, No Edit and Moon on the Water); the fourth, Truth 2000, carries jazz, rock and funk. The jazz-club side of the career is real: a live album from Pit Inn, a listing in the Japanese jazz database for his live dates and a long association with Matsuoka. The rock and pop side is also real, and he is not a pure jazz guitarist. He began in the rock band Pearl, he worked for years in the support bands of the singers Kenji Sawada and T.M.Revolution, and his best-known single was written for a motor-racing television programme. On balance he is a fusion guitarist whose instrumental records and long-running band work sit in the jazz-fusion scene, with the pop and rock work as the second strand of his career rather than the first.