Katsutoshi Morizono (森園勝敏) sits on the border between Japanese progressive rock and Japanese fusion, and it is fairer to say so than to pick a side. He is best known as the founding guitarist and lead voice of the prog band Yonin Bayashi (四人囃子). The records under his own name, from Bad Anima (1978) to Downforce (1991), are fusion and jazz-rock albums: Discogs files every one of them under Jazz, with the style tags Fusion, Jazz-Funk or Jazz-Rock, and Wikidata describes him as a singer and jazz guitarist. His place in this catalogue rests on that run of solo records and on the fusion groups around them, not on his rock beginnings.

He was born in Tokyo on February 18, 1954. According to Japanese Wikipedia's account of Yonin Bayashi, he met the drummer Daiji Okai in 1969, while both were still in high school, and the two of them began playing as a trio, The San-nin, with the bassist Shinichi Nakamura. With the keyboardist Hidemi Sakashita it became Yonin Bayashi, listed as active from 1971. The same article repeats a story from the liner notes of the band's reissue series, that by the age of eighteen they were known for playing Pink Floyd's "Echoes" in full. Their major debut, Ishoku-Sokuhatsu, came out in 1974 on Toho Records, and a second album, Golden Picnics (CBS/Sony, 1976), credits Morizono on guitar, synthesizer, percussion and lead vocals. He left after that record, and Mitsuru Sato took over as singer and guitarist in 1977.

One of the songs he took with him was "Lady Violetta", which Yonin Bayashi released in 1976. He kept returning to it: a studio version on Just Now & Then (1982), live versions from the 1978 Guitar Work Shop nights, a 1989 Yonin Bayashi reunion, and more. In 2020 Steps Records gathered ten of those versions on a single CD, also titled Lady Violetta.

Almost immediately he was in a different kind of band. Prism's own history, as told on Japanese Wikipedia, has Morizono joining during the recording of the group's debut: the producer brought in the guitarist who had just left Yonin Bayashi and already knew the members, and he stayed. Prism (Polydor, 1977) credits him on guitar on four tracks, "Cycling", "Dancing Moon", "Love Me" and "Tornado", and on Second Thoughts/Second Move (Polydor, 1978) he is a credited band member and the composer of "Daydream". The other guitarist in that line-up was Akira Wada, the keyboardist was Daisaku Kume, and the bassist was Ken Watanabe. Japanese Wikipedia says Morizono left after the second album; he returned as a guest on two tracks of the 1979 double album Prism Live, and Kume and Ken Watanabe appear beside him on several of his own later records.

In the same two years he was part of the Guitar Work Shop series, which put four guitarists on one record. The first, Guitar Work Shop (Flying Dog, 1977), paired Morizono with Kenji Omura, Kazumi Watanabe and the Osaka guitarist June Yamagishi (山岸潤史). Its nine tracks give each player two pieces of his own and close with all four on "I'm in You"; Morizono's are "Day Dream" and "Out of Blue". The rhythm section on the first record includes Daisaku Kume on keyboards and Ryuichi Sakamoto on keyboards, with Nobuyoshi Ino, Yoshihiro Naruse and Ken Watanabe on bass. Guitar Work Shop Vol. 2 Live was recorded at Roppongi Pit Inn on October 20 and 21, 1978, with Kazumasa Akiyama in Kazumi Watanabe's chair, and has Sakamoto on piano, synthesizer and organ and Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami on drums. Guitar Workshop Vol. 3 Direct Disk (Invitation, 1980) was cut directly to disc in September and October 1979 and has Morizono singing and playing "Face Your Fears", with Motohiko Hamase on electric bass and Akiko Yano credited on acoustic piano.

Morizono's own records began in 1978 on Electric Bird, King Records' fusion imprint. Bad Anima (SKS 8003) was recorded at King Studios between October 14 and 30, 1978. He plays electric and acoustic guitar, sings, and plays the Solina string synthesizer and produced it with Shigeyuki Kawashima; Kume is on piano, electric piano and synthesizers, Satoshi Nakamura wrote the horn arrangements and plays with the Horn Spectrum section, and Murakami plays drums on two tracks. Cool Alley (SKS 8009, 1979) added an American session group to the credits, among them Jim Keltner on drums, Larry Knechtel on acoustic piano, Chuck Findley and Ollie Mitchell on trumpets, George Bohanon on trombone, Jackie Kelso on alto saxophone and Harvey Newmark on fretless bass, alongside Nakamura's synthesizers and horn arrangements.

Escape (1980) and Spirits (1981) are credited to Morizono with Bird's Eye View, his working band, with players including Nakamura on keyboards and tenor saxophone, Muneo Sagara on drums, Ryoichi Akimoto on bass and Mac Shimizu on percussion. Escape was recorded at Kitty Studio on March 11 to 17 and at King Studios from March 31 to April 5, 1980. On Spirits he plays electric bass, percussion, kalimba and marimba as well as guitar, wrote the material and produced it. A laserdisc, By the Sea (Pioneer, 1981), is also credited to Morizono with Bird's Eye View and carries eight tracks including "Quiet Dawn", "Day Dream" and "Night Bird". Just Now & Then (1982) followed with new takes of his own songs from the earlier albums, along with the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" and the Beatles' "Paperback Writer", with the singer Suzi Kim and Souichi Noriki on piano and synthesizer.

He also played on other leaders' Electric Bird sessions in these years. In 1980 he is the guitarist on the George Kawaguchi & Super Fusion Band album African Hot Dance, with George Kawaguchi on drums, Kiyoshi Sugimoto on guitar, Toshiyuki Honda on saxophones and flute and Yasuaki Shimizu on tenor saxophone; a year later he is the electric guitarist on Herdland (1981), composed and arranged by Chikara Ueda for Toshiyuki Miyama and the New Herd.

The later 1980s are the most pop-facing stretch of his career. He is credited as composer, arranger, producer and guitarist on Miki Matsubara's Cool Cut (Canyon, 1984), a record that also has Shigeharu Mukai on trombone and Akira Wada on a guitar solo. In the same decade he plays guitar on albums by the saxophonist Malta, including Sweet Magic (1984) and My Ballads (1987), and in the early 1990s he plays guitar and shares a sound-production credit on Ellis's Polystar albums. His own 4:17 p.m. (JVC, 1985) is built around his singing and a lighter palette; a FOND/SOUND review hears jazz fusion, post-bossa nova, reggae and light mellow city pop in it, and he programmed the drums himself on top of players such as Akira Okazawa and Ken Watanabe on bass and Souichi Noriki on keyboards. Cross-Talk (JVC, 1990) brings a horn section and Noriki back, and Downforce (Eastworld, 1991) is a quartet record with Yutaka Mogi on keyboards and a rhythm section of his Yonin Bayashi bandmates Daiji Okai on drums and Masahide Sakuma on bass.

Yonin Bayashi has remained a presence in his working life. Japanese Wikipedia lists him as a current member alongside Okai, notes a five-piece reunion that became the 1989 live album Full-House Matinee, and records him on stage with the band at the June 22, 2023 memorial concert for Sakashita in Futako-Tamagawa. On July 12, 2022 he was one of the former Prism members at the memorial concert for Wada at Club Citta in Kawasaki. The Electric Bird albums have returned through King Records reissues, Steps Records CDs in 2020 and 2021, and the French label WeWantSounds, which put out his "Space Traveller" as a single in 2024 and included him on the compilation Funk Tide (Tokyo Jazz-Funk from Electric Bird 1978-87). He turned 72 in February 2026.

Morizono is a rock guitarist who learned fusion on the job, and his sound never fully loses the first half of that sentence. The 1977 Rock Guitar Alternative lesson LPs for For Life Records show the repertoire he was teaching in the same year as Guitar Work Shop: Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love", the Allman Brothers Band's "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", George Benson's "Breezin'", Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So", next to his own "Lady Violetta". His first two albums as a leader, Bad Anima and Cool Alley, then put that vocabulary inside horn arrangements and a jazz rhythm section.

The unusual feature of his catalogue, for a Japanese fusion guitarist of his generation, is how often he sings. Discogs credits him with vocals on Bad Anima, Cool Alley, Escape, Spirits, Just Now & Then, 4:17 p.m. and Cross-Talk, and the songs are structured as songs, with titles such as "Give It Up Love" and "Accident Love" rather than only instrumental vehicles. The FOND/SOUND review of 4:17 p.m. calls his guitar playing on it understated and puts the vocals at the front of the mix.

How jazz he is depends on which record is on. Bad Anima is tagged Jazz and Blues on Discogs with the styles Fusion, Jazz-Funk and Contemporary Jazz; Escape is Jazz with Fusion and Jazz-Funk; Spirits carries Fusion and Jazz-Rock. 4:17 p.m. is also tagged Fusion, though the FOND/SOUND reviewer hears city pop and AOR in it as much as fusion, and the lesson records and the pop sessions show that the rock side never went away. This profile therefore treats him as a fusion and jazz-rock guitarist with a rock origin and a pop session career, not as a jazz improviser first.