Masato Nakamura (中村雅人, Nakamura Masato) is a saxophonist and flutist who leads Sleep Walker, a Tokyo quartet that French Wikipedia counts among the founding groups of Japanese club jazz. His name is shared by the Dreams Come True bassist 中村正人, a different person who is not a jazz musician, and by several others; everything below concerns the saxophonist, who is credited as 中村 雅人 on Discogs.

Little of his early life is on record. The television-listings site WEBザテレビジョン gives his birth year as 1959 and his birthplace as Kanagawa Prefecture, and describes him as a former member of Mondo Grosso, a saxophonist and flutist regarded as a heavyweight of the Japanese club-jazz scene who has also supplied songs to idol acts. No birth month or day, no teachers or schools and no first bands are published anywhere found, and he has no Wikipedia article of his own.

His first recorded work is with Mondo Grosso. Sony's group biography says the band formed in Kyoto in 1991 around the bassist Shinichi Osawa, with Nakamura on saxophone, Hajime Yoshizawa on keyboards and the French-born rapper B-Bandj as core members, and Shuya Okino of Kyoto Jazz Massive as co-producer and manager. It adds that Mondo Grosso was almost alone among Japan's acid-jazz acts in playing hot live sets, and that the debut album Mondo Grosso appeared on For Life Records in 1993. Discogs credits Nakamura on soprano and tenor saxophones on "Anger" on the compilation Jazz Hip Jap (Seven Samurai / NEC Avenue, 21 November 1992) and on the same title on Mo Wax's Jazz Hip Jap Project (1993) and Acid Jazz's Totally Wired Eleven (1994); on alto saxophone and flute on Marble (1993); and on Born Free and The European Expedition (both 1995). A biography on the site of the live house JZ Brat adds that he played the Mt. Fuji Jazz Festival in 1994 and presented a television programme of the same name, and that he performed or recorded with DJ Krush, Monday Michiru, United Future Organization, Toshinori Kondo, Theatre Brook, Soul Bossa Trio, Courtney Pine, Arto Lindsay and Da Lata. Discogs backs some of that with credits: flute on "Yellow Rain" on Monday Michiru's Maiden Japan (1994) and saxophone on "Scheme of Things" on her Double Image (1998), tenor saxophone on Toshinori Kondo's Club New Light (1993), soprano saxophone on "Nica's Dream" on United Future Organization's 3rd Perspective (1996), and solo flute and soprano saxophone on Soul Bossa Trio's At Wildjumbo (1996).

Sleep Walker grew out of a smaller group. In a 2006 interview with the Urbane Groove Network, Nakamura said that he, Yoshizawa, Okino and the programmer and guitarist Yasushi Kurobane had been the band Cosmic Village, and that Okino suggested they play more as a live band. He and Yoshizawa split off as saxophone and piano, the drummer Nobuaki Fujii joined after returning from the United States, and two bassists came and went before Kiyoshi Ikeda arrived. Tower Records Japan's 2003 profile dates the formation to 1997 and has the group playing around The Room, the Shibuya club Okino organised; Japanese Wikipedia gives 1998 as the start of activity. Discogs credits Nakamura on saxophone on Cosmic Village's 2001 single T.B.D. / WYG², and on keyboards and backing vocals on its B side.

The earliest Sleep Walker records are a 1998 promotional sampler EP on Especial Records, and "The Gate" on Blue (Deejays Cool Cuts) (1999), a remix project for Blue Note's 60th anniversary on which Discogs credits Nakamura as saxophonist and co-writer. He told the Urbane Groove Network that the brief was to build something from Blue Note samples and that the band worked the other way round: bass and drums played free first, Yoshizawa added keyboards, Nakamura added saxophone, and the programming went on last. The 12 inch "Ai-No-Kawa / Resurrection" followed on Especial in September 2000; Nakamura recalled that Okino's brother Yoshihiro started the label to release it. The band's own biography says the group played a week at London's Jazz Cafe with McCoy Tyner's trio in 2001. Nakamura explained in the interview that by then Sleep Walker was in effect only himself and Yoshizawa, and that the bassist Tomokazu Sugimoto and a drummer were brought in for the trip. The same biography says that in 2001 his solo alias Jah Massa had "Chant Dub" played on BBC Radio 1 by Gilles Peterson.

The self-titled debut album Sleepwalker came out in February 2003 on Especial (LP) and KSR (CD), produced by Kyoto Jazz Massive with Okino as executive producer. Discogs credits Nakamura on tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, saxello, percussion and didgeridoo, and as a writer on five of the eight tracks. In a profile in bounce that Tower Records Japan republished, he said the band's being "fun" should not be mistaken for looseness, since the music was what each member most wanted to play; Yoshizawa said that he and Nakamura had passed through much other music besides jazz and wanted to play a "players' jazz" with something that catches, rather than the smooth jazz of jazz-club sets. The quartet used no programmed beats and had no DJ.

Pharoah Sanders became the band's best-known collaborator. Okino recalled in an interview quoted on the blog barabara sounds that when Sanders was due in Japan in 2003 the band offered a recording to his management, that the answer came four days before the session, and that Sleep Walker wrote a new piece in those four days, with the members staying at Yoshizawa's house; when Nakamura took his tenor solo, Okino said, Pharoah Sanders called out his name. The band also played four days with Sanders at the Jazz Cafe in London in 2003, according to the group's biography. The recording was issued in July 2004 as the 12 inch "The Voyage / Into The Sun" (Especial ESP-010), on which Discogs credits Sanders on saxophone, and became the title track of the second album. Sanders played with the group again at the Metamorphose festival in 2006.

The mid-2000s were the band's busiest years. "River of Love" followed in November 2005, with the vocalist Bembe Segue. In 2006 Nakamura released his own project, the Masa Collective: "Love Is Everywhere," a cover of Sanders' composition with vocals by Valerie Etienne and Rob Gallagher of Two Banks of Four, in a house reconstruction by Kyoto Jazz Massive and an acoustic original version produced by Nakamura and Okino; it had first appeared on a 2004 wedding compilation, where Discogs credits him as producer, arranger and saxophonist. The second Sleep Walker album, The Voyage, came out on Village Again on 19 July 2006 with Sanders, Bembe Segue and the singer Yukimi Nagano as guests. "Ai-No-Tabi" from it was used in a Nikon camera commercial, and the band's biography says that The Voyage and its successor Works (6 June 2007) each won the "domestic club/dance" award of the magazine Adlib. Japanese Wikipedia says Works topped Tower Records Japan's jazz chart for the week of 4 to 10 June 2007. In July 2007 the group played the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam (Sunday 15 July), billed with Bembe Segue on vocals, Nakamura, Ikeda, Fujii and the pianist Shota Hishiyama. He also appears as a featured soloist on the Tokyo band Quasimode's albums The Land of Freedom (2007) and Sounds of Peace (2008).

Europe then took up the band. The French label Jazzmin Records issued the 12 inch "Brotherhood," recorded in Tokyo on 15 and 16 October 2007, in May 2008 and a compilation, Into The Sun, later that year. The saxophone magazine's website SAX ONLINE says the band has toured Europe every other year since 2003. Their first concert in France was at the Batofar in Paris on 21 October 2008, and according to French Wikipedia their guest that night, Stéphane Belmondo, played three pieces with them.

In 2010 Nakamura stepped out with the Masa Sextet. The Amazon listing for the album Deep Cover says the repertoire was chosen by DJs including Patrick Forge, Gilles Peterson, Jurgen Knoblauch of Jazzanova, Dill Harris of Two Banks of Four and Kyoto Jazz Massive; Forge is credited as producer on the sampler EP, which carries three of the seven tracks. The sextet on that EP is Nakamura, the trombonist Takao Hirose, the trumpeter and percussionist Hiderow Nishioka, the pianist Shota Hishiyama, Ikeda and Fujii. The sampler appeared on Especial in November 2010 and the CD on Village Again on 15 December 2010.

He is still working. A 7 inch of "Into The Sun" and "Wind" (Kawasaki Records, 29 March 2023) marked the 30th anniversary of Okino's The Room. A blog report dated 18 January 2016 describes a concert two days earlier in Isahaya, Nagasaki, billed as the Masato Nakamura Quartet in the Art of Freedom series, with three younger players and the saxophonist Nobi Tanaka as guest; the writer compared his playing with Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. A video records him in an improvised tenor saxophone and piano duo with Masumi Ishikawa on 11 June 2022, and the saxophonist Motoharu announced him as special guest at an Isahaya concert on 24 November 2024. In July 2026 Discogs shows him on tenor saxophone on "Fireworks" on Alsciaukat's CD A New Myth (Visca Sounds).

What is not known: his birth month and day, his training, the instruments he started on, and any recent statement from him about his career. The official artist page once listed on Discogs no longer loads, and the band's former website is no longer online.

Nakamura plays tenor saxophone as the lead voice of Sleep Walker, with soprano saxophone and flute as colours. The group's identity, in its own biography and in its reviews, is live acoustic jazz played for club audiences. A British reviewer of The Voyage for Basic Soul described flute, piano and saxophone solos over the hardest jazz percussion around; the US retailer Dusty Groove, quoted on barabara sounds, heard modal lines and spiritual-jazz energy in the manner of Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. French Wikipedia says his sound draws on the "mystical" jazz of the late 1960s, in particular Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, and the Nagasaki report of his 2016 quartet made the same comparison with Coltrane and Sanders.

The Sanders connection runs through his own choices of repertoire as well as the 2003 session. Mondo Grosso's 1995 mini-CD Oh Lord, Let Me Do No Wrong credits Sanders as composer of its title track, with Nakamura credited on its second track, and the Masa Collective's "Love Is Everywhere" in 2006 is a cover of a Sanders composition. Sleep Walker's records favour long pieces: five of the eight tracks on the debut album run past eight minutes.

He is a multi-instrumentalist in the studio. Beyond tenor, soprano and flute, Discogs credits him on alto saxophone and flute on Mondo Grosso's Marble, baritone saxophone, saxello, percussion and didgeridoo on Sleepwalker, and clarinet on a 1998 Cosmic Village remix. As a writer he is credited on five tracks of the debut album, while he said in 2006 that most of The Voyage was written by Yoshizawa and shaped by the band in performance.

A large part of his discography is guest saxophone on records led by DJs and producers: Mondo Grosso, Cosmic Village, Quasimode, Calm, DJ Mitsu the Beats, Kyoto Jazz Massive's 10th anniversary compilation and others. His own groups, by contrast, are jazz groups, and the Masa Sextet repertoire was chosen by jazz-minded DJs. The jazz-adjacent labels Acid Jazz, Nu Jazz and Spiritual Jazz describe him better than club-music ones.