Masahiko Ozu (小津昌彦) was a Japanese jazz drummer and percussionist, born on April 5, 1941, in Matsusaka, Mie Prefecture. A Japanese biographical dictionary of entertainers records that he graduated from Rikkyo University and turned professional in 1963 in the group of the tenor saxophonist Akira Miyazawa. It lists sessions through the following years with the bandleader Niji Fujiie, the pianists Masahiko Satoh, Hideo Ichikawa and Yuzuru Sera, and the tenor saxophonist Hidehiko Matsumoto. The same source says he played with Ornette Coleman during Coleman's October 1967 visit to Japan and later worked with visiting American singers, naming Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae.

His documented recording career begins in 1970 and starts with the pianist Masaru Imada. He is the drummer on Maki (Victor, 1970), an Imada trio record with Takashi Mizuhashi on bass and Ichiro Mimori adding tenor saxophone on two tracks, and on Imada's quartet debut Now!! (Three Blind Mice TBM-2, recorded in August 1970), four long Imada originals running from just under nine minutes to just over ten. In 1973 he returned to Three Blind Mice for Poppy (TBM-14), recorded on January 25 and 26: the first side is Imada alone at the piano, and the second side is a trio of Imada, the bassist Isoo Fukui and Ozu on "Sea Weeds," "Poppy" and "Ascent."

In between came the most internationally visible work of his career. Masahiko Satoh took his trio, with Yasuo Arakawa on bass and Ozu on drums, to the Berlin Jazz Festival, and on November 6, 1971, the set was recorded: two side-long pieces, "Poise" (21:44) and "Route 29E" (18:41), with Satoh adding ring-modulator electronics to his piano. Toshiba issued it in 1972 as Penetration: Masahiko Sato Trio in Berlin. The next day, November 7, the same trio recorded in Teldec Studio in Berlin with the Hungarian-born guitarist Attila Zoller, producing A Path Through Haze for MPS, released in 1972 with Zoller and Satoh as co-billed leaders and Joachim Ernst Berendt as executive producer.

A second strand ran through the same years and sits at the other end of the taste spectrum. From 1971 to 1973 Ozu co-led a series of records for the Canyon label with the drummer Shoji Nagashiba, two drummers trading and layering parts over arrangements by Yasutoshi Nakajima or Koji Makaino. Discogs lists six of them: the 1971 Double Drum (C-1032), Double Drum: Hit Hit Hit (C-1041, December 1971), Double Drums: Caravan (C-1043, February 1972), a second Double Drum (C-1053, April 1972), a third (C-1063, September 1972) and 4ch Drum vs. Drum / Splendid Rock (C-1066, February 1973). The repertoire ranges from Japanese pop hits of the day to jazz standards and drum features ("Caravan," "Work Song," "Peter Gunn," "Take Five," "Sabre Dance") and, on the 1973 record, rock and soul covers from "Theme from Shaft" and "Immigrant Song" to "Proud Mary" and "Hey Jude." Discogs files the whole series under jazz-funk.

From the middle of the decade he turns up as the working drummer on Tokyo studio dates. On April 28 and 29, 1974, at Victor Studio in Tokyo, he recorded By Myself Alone for East Wind with the Dutch singer Ann Burton, in a band with Masahiko Satoh on piano, Akira Miyazawa on tenor saxophone and flute, Kunimitsu Inaba on bass and Sadanori Nakamure on guitar; Ozu is credited on drums across the album and on congas for four tracks. In 1976 he is the drummer on Yardbird Suite, a bebop-repertoire quartet date by the pianist Kazuo Yashiro with the tenor saxophonist Konosuke Saijo and the bassist Osamu Kawakami, issued on Yupiteru. The dictionary entry adds that in 1979 he formed his own trio and began presenting regular self-produced concerts.

His own name finally goes on a sleeve as a bandleader on Midare (LOB, 1982), a percussion album shared with the marimba player Michiko Takahashi and the percussionist and vibraphonist Ichiro Masuda. The first side is the 14-minute title piece; the second belongs to the Masahiko Ozu Group, who play "The Legend of Dragon" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "A Felicidade," and the credits list Ozu on drums and taiko alongside Masami Nakagawa on flute and piccolo, Takeshi Onodera on percussion and Yasukazu Amemiya on timpani. Japanese reference works also list a 1983 leader album, Dolphin Dance, which has no entry on Discogs.

In the 1980s and early 1990s he is mostly in mainstream company. He drums on four tracks of the singer Kei Marimura's Elegance (Discomate, 1982) with the Yasuo Arakawa Trio, on Miyazawa's ballad album 'Round Midnight: Amazing Jazz Ballad (Paddle Wheel, recorded February 6 and 7, 1985), and on Dolly Baker's All Waves (Sony, 1993). On December 21, 1989, he was the drummer in Miyazawa's quartet at the Grand Hotel Hamamatsu; that live set was not released until 2002, as Sea Horse, five years after Ozu and two years after Miyazawa had passed away. Ozu passed away in 1997, aged 56.

The records show a drummer who could be placed in three quite different rooms. With Masaru Imada he is the modal, post-bop timekeeper of the early Three Blind Mice catalogue, where the tracks run long and the trio or quartet is left to develop a theme; Discogs tags Now!! as modal, free improvisation and post-bop. With Masahiko Satoh in Berlin he is part of a free-leaning trio that plays two uninterrupted sides with electronics, and Discogs files Penetration under free jazz and A Path Through Haze under free improvisation. With Miyazawa, Yashiro and Ann Burton he plays standards and ballads in a straightforward mainstream setting.

The Double Drum albums are a different proposition: showcase records built on the novelty of two drum kits, with pop and rock repertoire, and they account for six of the 38 credits on his Discogs page; the rest are sideman, guest and compilation appearances. He also played congas and, on Midare, taiko, and that record, tagged avant-garde on Discogs, is the one place where his own group plays under its own name.