Jun Suzuki (鈴木淳) is a Japanese bassist whose name runs through Tokyo recording sessions from 1968 into the late 1970s, from free improvisation and jazz-rock big bands to folk-rock and television-era pop. He played both double bass and electric bass. He never led a record of his own, and little has been written about him: no interview, obituary or biography is readily available, so what follows rests on sleeve credits, label and retailer listings, Wikipedia entries for other musicians, and the website of the drummer he worked for. His birth date, birthplace and present status have not been published.

His earliest dated credits are from 1968. On 25 April of that year he was one of three bassists in the studio orchestra that Norio Maeda conducted at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo for Jazz Rock Relax (Express), with Akira Ishikawa's group in the band, and the same year he plays bass on Ishikawa's Rhythm and Blues in Rock 'N' Roll (Victor). The drummer Takeshi Inomata became his most frequent leader. Inomata's own website, in its history of the Maeda and Inomata trio WE3, names 鈴木淳 as the trio's second bassist: when the first, Tatsuro Takimoto, fell ill, Jun Suzuki joined, and within a year the chair passed to Yasuo Arakawa, who stayed. The site gives no dates for his stretch and shows a photograph of him from the 1972 LP 四季 (Shiki).

On 20 January and 3 February 1969 he recorded Variation with the trombonist Hiroshi Suzuki, the drummer Masahiko Togashi, the pianist Yuji Ohno and the trumpeter Tetsuo Fushimi. Columbia issued it on 10 May 1969 in its Takt Jazz Series, and Discogs files it under contemporary jazz and free improvisation. Nippon Columbia's own listing for its announced clear-vinyl reissue (COJY-9601, due 3 November 2026) prints the quintet with 鈴木 淳 on bass. Its opening tune, "Castle Cats", is also credited to him on the live double album All Japan Jazz Festival '69 (Columbia), recorded at Tokyo Koseinenkin Hall by the Swing Journal All-Stars '69, and he is credited on bass for "Memphis Underground" at the Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall on 30 August 1969, a track the Apple Music edition of Jazz in Tokyo '69 gives to the Takeshi Inomata Quintet.

Inomata's big band Sound Limited made 1970 his busiest year on record. On 25 to 27 March the group recorded Sounds of Sound L.T.D. for Columbia at Tokyo Studio Centre, with Ryo Kawasaki and Shigenori Kamiya on electric guitars, Toshiaki Yokota on flute, Takao Uematsu on tenor saxophone, Shunzo Ohno on trumpet and Suzuki on electric bass, printed on the sleeve as 鈴木淳. In April the band cut Sound Ltd. for Express, on which he is credited on both electric bass and stand-up bass. On 30 April he is credited for "Mustache" at the Sensational Jazz '70 concert at Shibuya Public Hall, and on 22 June the band recorded New Rock in Europe for Express. Hit! Hit! Hit! for Victor, the Express album Guts the Drum and Jazz Rock in Stravinsky (Maeda's arrangements of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring for twenty-six credited musicians) also date from this stretch. Innocent Canon, recorded on 21 February 1971, credits him with electric bass, Fender bass, solo whistling and melodica. Later that year came Inomata Meets Rock, recorded in Hawaii on 25 April 1971, and the two albums by The Third, Inomata's big band with Maeda conducting, Hare Krishna (recorded 6 and 10 April 1971) and Morning Glory (December 1971). In 1972 he is the bassist on Drum Battle Rock Now, Inomata's four-drummer rock record.

He also appears on records Maeda made under his own name: Five Sax / Close to You (Columbia, 1971), Revolution (Columbia, 1972), a small-band set built on Bach fugues and preludes on which his sleeve credit reads 鈴木淳, and Jazz in Symphony (Columbia, 1973). Other jazz-leaning credits include Exciting Flute and Élévation for the flutist Toshiaki Yokota (both 1970), Bamboo (1970), on which he plays bass behind the shakuhachi player Minoru Muraoka and a group of traditional instruments, and Possibility of the Bass (Express, 1970), where he is the rhythm bassist among five bassists and the NHK Symphony Orchestra Bass Quartet around Masanaga Harada.

His name appears on a sleeve billing only once. Bass Deluxe (Philips), an LP of thirteen standards and themes, credits Yasuo Arakawa, Masaoki Terakawa, Isao Eto and 鈴木淳 as its four bassists, and he plays on three tracks: "Yesterday", "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise" and "So What". In 1976 he plays contrabass on four tracks of Jimmy Takeuchi's double album Jimmy's Jazz Shop (Toshiba), and in July 1977 he is one of two electric bassists on Dead Heat (Victor) by ランナバウツ, with Akira Ishikawa on drums. Outside jazz, Discogs credits him with bass on folk-rock and pop sessions through the 1970s, among them records by Alice, Off Course and Kaguyahime. From the 1980s the entries are reissues and compilations.

Two Wikipedia articles mention a bassist named 鈴木淳 in passing. The Japanese article on the bassist Masaoki Terakawa gives the same split of bass credits on the CBS/Sony album The Drum Battle that Discogs shows, with 鈴木淳 on one track. The Japanese article on the bassist Tsugutoshi Goto says that, on the introduction of the drummer Chito Kawachi, Goto went to the home of 鈴木淳 to study upright bass and music reading; Kawachi is one of the four drummers on Drum Battle Rock Now, on which Suzuki plays bass. Japanese Wikipedia's page for the name also lists, among the people called 鈴木淳, a jazz bassist and studio musician who heads a bass school, and has no article for him. No published source ties that description to a particular list of recordings.

The name is among the commonest in Japan and attracts namesakes. The composer 鈴木淳 (1934 to 2021), whose songs include "Koyubi no Omoide" and who wrote for enka and kayokyoku singers, is a different person, as is the rock bassist 鈴木淳 (born 1968) who has played with The Pillows. Songwriting credits for the first appear under Jun Suzuki's Discogs entry and are not counted here.

No interview or liner note describing his approach has been found, so this section stays with what the records show. He moves between instruments in step with the period. His acoustic credits (stand-up bass on Sound Ltd., contrabass on Jimmy's Jazz Shop, rhythm bass on Possibility of the Bass) sit beside electric-bass credits from 1970 onward, and on Innocent Canon the sleeve adds a Fender bass, solo whistling and melodica to his part.

The settings range across the Japanese jazz scene of 1968 to 1977. Variation is filed by Discogs as free improvisation, Sound Limited and The Third as jazz-rock and jazz-funk, Jimmy's Jazz Shop as cool jazz and swing. In the same years he is a working studio bassist for folk, pop and kayokyoku dates, which is why he is best understood as a sideman of the Tokyo session world rather than a bandleader with a recognisable catalogue of his own.