Kiyoshi Sugimoto (杉本喜代志, Sugimoto Kiyoshi) is the guitarist who turns up in the middle of an astonishing number of Japanese records, and also the leader of a handful of his own that collectors now chase. He was born on 3 February 1942 in Shizuoka Prefecture, and Japanese reference works file him as a jazz guitarist first, with a studio career beside it that ran through jazz rock, pop, anime songs and kayokyoku.

The guitar came early. His father, who had wanted to be a musician himself, bought him a small guitar when he was in sixth grade. In the summer of his first year of high school he took a night train to Tokyo to study with a classical guitarist, and on the train a cellist from the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra named Asai heard that the boy wanted to be a jazz guitarist and took him home. Asai introduced him to the bandleader Munehiro Okuda, and Sugimoto began as a band boy for Okuda's dance orchestra, the Blue Sky Orchestra. From there Okuda recommended him as second guitarist to the country band Kazuya Kosaka & the Wagon Masters, where Hiroshi Kamayatsu was also playing, and he went on through the rockabilly groups of the early 1960s, including George Otsuka & the Thunderbirds (the band of George Otsuka) and Keijiro Yamashita & the Tokyo Yankees. A reissue label dates his professional career to 1960.

Jazz came next. He worked in the Yasuro Osawa Trio, Hiroshi Okazaki & the Star Gazers and Akira Ishikawa's Count Buffaloes. By 1967 he was in the studio with Hideo Shiraki for Shiraki Meets Kayama Vol. 2, in a band that included Terumasa Hino on trumpet, Jiro Inagaki on tenor saxophone and Yuji Ohno on piano. In 1968 he is on Ishikawa's Rhythm and Blues in Rock 'n' Roll with Hino, Inagaki and Hiromasa Suzuki.

His own first jazz record came out of a December 1969 session. On 7 December 1969, at Teichiku Kaikan Studio in Tokyo, the Kiyoshi Sugimoto Quartet recorded Country Dream for Nippon Columbia (XMS-10024-CT), released on 1 March 1970. The band was Sugimoto, Hiromasa Suzuki on piano, Yoshio Ikeda on bass and Motohiko Hino on drums. Weeks later, on 17 January and 2 February 1970, the same studio hosted Guitar Workshop for Union Records, a four-guitarist showcase that put Sugimoto beside Ryo Kawasaki, Yoshiaki Masuo and Masayuki Takayanagi.

In 1970 he joined the Terumasa Hino Quintet, and the band took him abroad. Peace and Love was recorded in Japan on 29 September and 1 October 1970 with the American bassist Reggie Workman in the band. The following spring, on 31 March 1971, the quintet recorded Love Nature at Obe Studio in Teaneck, New Jersey, with Workman, alto saxophonist Gary Bartz and drummer Eric Gravatt, and Sugimoto is credited on electric guitar. On 6 November 1971 the Hino quintet, with Sugimoto, Takao Uematsu on tenor saxophone, Ikeda and Motohiko Hino, played the Berlin Jazz Festival, documented as Hino at Berlin Jazz Festival '71. Japanese biographies add the Newport Jazz Festival and Carnegie Hall to that American run. He stayed with the leader into 1972: Fuji, cut at Victor Studio on 8 March 1972, credits the Terumasa Hino Sextet with Sugimoto, Uematsu, Ikeda, Motohiko Hino and Mikio Masuda on electric piano.

Alongside the Hino years he made a string of records of his own. Rock Joy in Guitar (MCA, 1971) recast pop and rock material, among them "Samba Pa Ti", "You've Got a Friend" and "The Wizard", as guitar-led instrumentals, with Hiromasa Suzuki arranging strings; it belongs to the MCA Rock Joy instrumental series, and a later compilation, Rock Joy Best Album, was co-billed with Takeshi Inomata, pianist Hideo Ichikawa and saxophonist Takeru Muraoka. My Sweet Lord (Columbia, 1971) put a sextet with Muraoka, Suzuki on organ and piano, Motohiko Hino on drums, a second guitarist and bassist Isao Eto through Beatles, Santana and Carpenters material. Guitar Method (Columbia, 1972) is a set of 12 pop and rock standards from "Imagine" to "Black Dog", and in the same year the Warner Bros. quadraphonic LP The Summit of Guitar Quartet set him against Shungo Sawada, Kimio Mizutani and Sadanori Nakamure with arrangements by Norio Maeda.

The record reissue labels have pushed hardest is Babylonia Wind (Columbia XMS-10037-J, 1972): Sugimoto on guitar, Uematsu on tenor saxophone, Ichikawa on electric piano, Ikeda on bass and Motohiko Hino on drums, five tracks of jazz rock and fusion with an ancient-world archaeology theme ("Mrs Darius", "Rosetta Stone", "Colsbard Hill", "Hieroglyph"). Japanese biographies say Terumasa Hino played uncredited percussion on it. A reissue label's liner essay calls it the high point of his achievement. The next year the Kiva label issued a live set from the Roppongi club Mingos Musico by the Kiyoshi Sugimoto Quintet (25 October 1973), with Uematsu, Masayoshi Yoneda on electric piano, Tamio Kawabata on bass and Arihide Kurata on drums, playing "Old Folks", "Round Midnight" and "When Sunny Gets Blue".

By his label's account he then spent about a year studying in the United States, and Our Time (Columbia KZ-7505) was recorded on 28 December 1974 and 10 and 28 January 1975 at Nippon Columbia's No. 1 Studio in Tokyo, a jazz-funk date with Akira Ishikawa on drums, Hiromasa Suzuki on keyboards, Takao Uematsu on saxophone and Tsunehide Matsuki on harmonica and rhythm guitar. In 1976 he played on Hiromasa Suzuki's High-Flying beside Masayoshi Takanaka, and in 1977 he recorded an instructional LP, Electric Guitar Course, with Haruo Togashi on piano, Kenji Takamizu on bass and Yuichi Togashiki on drums.

L.A. Master (Express ETP-80020, released 5 June 1978) was built across sessions from December 1976 to October 1977: Yasuaki Shimizu on saxophones, Haruo Togashi on electric piano, Akira Okazawa on bass and Yuichi Togashiki on drums, with Jake H. Concepcion on alto saxophone, Jun Fukamachi arranging keyboard parts and Sugimoto composing and arranging. It is where the jazz-funk and fusion he had been working toward fully arrives.

The early 1980s were his busiest jazz years on record. On Another Soil (Denon, 1980) he is the guitarist behind Tomoki Takahashi and the American drummer Elvin Jones. He plays on George Kawaguchi's African Hot Dance (1980) alongside Toshiyuki Honda and Shimizu, on Masaru Imada's Carnival (1981) with the brothers Michael Brecker and Randy Brecker, and on Jiro Inagaki & Just Friends' Jazzy (1981). One More (Nippon Columbia YF-7007-ND, 1981), his best-known leader record of the period, brought Marcus Miller on electric bass, Omar Hakim on drums, Warren Bernhardt on piano and electric piano and Shunzo Ohno on trumpet.

Throughout, there was the studio work. He is on Maki Asakawa's albums of 1978 to 1982, on Miyuki Nakajima's Arigatou (1977), Shin'ai naru mono e (1979) and Kaikinetsu (1989), on Mariya Takeuchi's Love Songs (1980) and Taeko Onuki's Aventure (1981), and on Yuji Ohno's scores for The Inugami Family (1976) and Proof of the Man (1977). Japanese sources describe him as the first-call guitarist for the composer Kyohei Tsutsumi. A 1978 session for Yupiteru put him in the rhythm section behind Sonny Stitt on The Shadow of Your Smile, with Tsuyoshi Yamamoto on piano.

A live recording of "Blue Bossa" with Joe Henderson and the organist Kankawa, cut in 1987 and released in 2005 as Jazz Time II, has Sugimoto on guitar. In 1999 he joined Yuji Ohno's trio on Lupin the Third "Jazz" with Yoshio Suzuki on bass, playing on tracks 1, 6 and 8, and he appeared on the follow-up volumes of that series. Circulation, recorded live in 2001 with Kankawa, drummer Greg Bandy and singer Cynthia Mari, was his first leader album in about twenty years. His Japanese Wikipedia entry lists a 2004 trio record, Batteries Not Included, with drummer Takeo Moriyama and bassist Kenji Takamizu, and a 2019 Latin-jazz album, Arcadia, which marked his return after a break for illness treatment. In February 2020 he gave a first "Birthday Live" at Jazz Spot J in Shinjuku, and the same entry lists a 2021 Jazz Award from the Japan Jazz Music Association. He turned 84 in February 2026.

Interest in his catalogue has turned international. Nippon Columbia reissued Country Dream, Babylonia Wind and Our Time on CD and vinyl, Light in the Attic reissued Babylonia Wind and Our Time for the Western market, Victor issued Rock Joy in Guitar on SHM-CD on 28 November 2018, and his tracks are on the Spiritual Jazz 8: Japan and J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan compilations.

Sugimoto's playing moves across three registers. The earliest is modern jazz: the 1969 to 1972 sessions with Hiromasa Suzuki and the Hinos, and Fuji with the Hino Sextet, treat the guitar as a horn-like melodic voice inside a post-bop and free-leaning front line. The second is the jazz rock and fusion of Babylonia Wind, with its electric piano and tenor saxophone front line and its long suite-like structures. The third is the funk-inflected studio sound of Our Time, L.A. Master and One More, where he writes and arranges for rhythm sections and horns.

A reissue label's liner essay describes his sound as cutting-edge and varied, spanning modern jazz and jazz rock, and says Terumasa Hino "longed for" him as a sideman and Akira Ishikawa "fell in love with" him. His own teaching records, Guitar Method (1972) and the 1977 Electric Guitar Course, show how consciously he thought about the instrument; the second includes an analysis of "Body and Soul" and a section on the theory behind improvising, and Japanese sources say the guitarist Kazumi Watanabe asked to study with him and was turned away only because Sugimoto's schedule was too full.

Japanese sources also say he declined an invitation to join Sadao Watanabe's group, and that the guitarist Yoshiaki Masuo took the place instead. His stylistic roots, from country and rockabilly in his teens to jazz and then fusion, run through his catalogue in the form of records like Country Dream and Rock Joy in Guitar, and he moved easily between them.