Masaki Matsubara (松原正樹, Matsubara Masaki in Japanese order) was born on 27 June 1954 in Takefu, now part of Echizen, in Fukui Prefecture. Japanese Wikipedia says his family ran a bar with a dance floor, that he played trombone in his junior high school brass band, and that a former group-sounds guitarist he knew in his second year of junior high pushed him toward the guitar. He studied at the Yamaha Nemu Music Institute in Mie Prefecture and moved to Tokyo about six months after enrolling, playing U.S. military camps and a pub band in Kamata.

By 1974 he was in the backing band of the group High Fi Set, and with Masato Shigeta, Keisuke Miyashita and Hiroshi Shinkawa he formed a band called Galbozin, which Japanese Wikipedia says Yumi Matsutoya named. In 1978 he joined Push & Pull, the backing band of the singer Masaki Ueda. Recording sessions followed the band's television appearances, and from the late 1970s he became one of the most called-on studio guitarists in Japan. His Discogs profile and Tower Records Japan both put his credits above 10,000 recordings, among them work for Yumi Matsutoya, Chiharu Matsuyama, Masashi Sada, Hideaki Tokunaga, Akina Nakamori, Seiko Matsuda and Kyoko Koizumi.

His own recording career began in the same year. Ruumu Sand (流宇夢サンド, Victor, 1978) is a nine-track LP arranged by Masaki Ueda and Masataka Matsutoya, with the drummer Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami, the tenor saxophonist Takeru Muraoka, Keisuke Miyashita on bass and Nobu Saito on percussion. A second LP, Take A Song (Victor, 1979), brought in Ryuichi Sakamoto on keyboards, Akiko Yano among the chorus, Tsugutoshi Goto on bass, Tatsuo Hayashi on drums and Muraoka again on tenor, with Matsubara himself credited on guitar and keyboards.

In 1979 he co-founded the fusion band Parachute with the guitarist Tsuyoshi Kon, Hayashi, Saito, the bassist and singer Mike Dunn and the keyboardists Yoshihiko Ando and Izumi Kobayashi (Akira Inoue joined later). The band took its name from football, aiming to be a group that could shoot from any angle. It made four studio albums for Agharta between 1980 and 1982, From Asian Port, 6 Kinds 6 Sizes, Haere Mai and Sylvia, and Discogs credits Matsubara as producer of Haere Mai. Parachute went quiet after 1982, then returned for a one-day appearance at Crossover Japan '03, a show at Tokyo International Forum on 29 December 2012, and anniversary tours in 2014 and 2015. A live album, Never Landing, appeared in 2016.

In 1983 Agharta (Canyon) issued two solo albums with vocals, Sniper and Painted Woman. Sniper has the American singer Jesse Barish, and Painted Woman, which Matsubara co-produced with Harry Kaneko, has Eric Tagg and the track "Silly Crush". Both were reissued on vinyl in 2024 by Light in the Attic. Been (1985) and Stories (1987) followed, and in 1986 he formed the band Aka-Guy with Nobu Saito and others. Around 1988 he started Triforce with the keyboardist Masae Nanbu, who was also his wife, and the singers Naoki Takao and Nozomi Takao. Their self-titled 1990 album was arranged in part by the Los Angeles arranger Jerry Hey, and a live set from Roppongi Pit Inn, recorded across 1990 to 1994, came out in 2005. In 1997 Matsubara and Nanbu set up the production unit ON-DO with Atsuki Kawachi.

In 2000 he founded his own label, Rocking Chair Music, and launched the Humarhythm series, whose emphasis was live playing and which Japanese Wikipedia says was well received. Humarhythm I (March 2000) was followed by II (2002), a double Humarhythm Live (2003), III (2004), IV (2006) and V (2008), alongside the Victor/Aosis albums Tender Heart, Road Movie and All-n-All (2000 and 2001), the acoustic re-recordings of Acoustic Age (2004) and a duo guitar album with Tsuyoshi Kon, The Guitar Bros. (2003). Live albums marked his 30th anniversary as a recording artist (2009) and his 35th (2014). He played a 60th-birthday show at Meguro BAJ in 2014.

Masaki Matsubara passed away on 8 February 2016, aged 61, of duodenal cancer. Rocking Chair issued a farewell compilation, ありがとう。・・・またね, on 14 March 2016, and Victor reissued five of his albums in 2017. Japanese Wikipedia notes that the pro wrestler Kenta Kobashi, who used a Matsubara piece as an entrance theme, posted a tribute to him after his death.

Matsubara's scope is wider than most entries on this site, and it is worth stating plainly. Most of what he recorded was accompaniment for pop singers, idols and folk-rock songwriters: the largest runs of credits in his Discogs list belong to Yumi Matsutoya (27 releases), Paris Match (18), Seiko Matsuda (10) and Bread & Butter (9). Japanese Wikipedia lists his genres as fusion, city pop and kayokyoku. His biographies do not mention jazz-club leadership, jazz-department teaching or jazz awards.

What puts him here is his own work. Discogs files almost all of his leader albums under Jazz, with Fusion or Jazz-Funk as the style, and Parachute is described as a pioneer of Japanese fusion. The sound runs between two poles. On Humarhythm, The Guitar Bros. and the Triforce live set he plays extended, melodic electric-guitar fusion with horns and keyboards behind him, and a review of Humarhythm V describes his solos as soulful and melodic over funky, driving grooves. On Sniper, Painted Woman and parts of Humarhythm V the setting is vocal soul and AOR, which is the corner of his catalogue that collectors now file under city pop and light mellow.

His first musical models are not documented beyond the group-sounds guitarist in his hometown. What the recordings show is a player at ease in studio schedules: clean, precise phrasing placed tightly around other people's songs, then given more space on his own records. The Jazz Fusion and Jazz-Funk tags here describe that leader work, not his session career as a whole.