Masayoshi Takanaka was born Masayoshi Liu on March 27, 1953, in Tokyo's Kita ward, to a Chinese father from Nanjing and a Japanese mother. He was naturalized as a Japanese citizen in fourth grade and took the name Takanaka. As a teenager he played US military base clubs around Tokyo with a band called Escape, and his professional break came almost by accident: at an Apryl Fool concert, a member shouted for someone in the crowd to cover guitar, and Takanaka, still in his school uniform, climbed onstage and played.

That led to Flied Egg in 1971, where he was initially put on bass rather than guitar by his mentor, Shigeru Narumo, who taught him music theory that way. He released two studio albums with the band, "Dr. Siegel's Fried Egg Shooting Machine" and "Good Bye," both in 1972, before the group dissolved. In 1972 he joined Sadistic Mika Band, releasing their self-titled debut in 1973 and, the following year, "Kurofune" (黒船), recorded in England and released November 5, 1974. "Kurofune" sold poorly at the time but was later ranked ninth on Rolling Stone Japan's list of the 100 greatest Japanese rock albums. When Sadistic Mika Band split in 1975, Takanaka regrouped with three former bandmates, including future Yellow Magic Orchestra drummer Yukihiro Takahashi, as Sadistics, releasing a self-titled album in 1977 and "We Are Just Taking Off" in 1978.

He stepped out as a solo artist in 1976 with "Seychelles," released by Kitty Records that July and recorded at Polydor Studio in Tokyo. Discogs tags the record Jazz, Latin, Fusion, and Jazz-Funk simultaneously, and its confirmed session lineup, bassist Tsugutoshi Goto, drummer Tatsuo Hayashi, keyboardist Hiroshi Imai, and saxophonist Jake H. Concepcion alongside Takanaka's own guitar, set the template for the run of albums that followed: "Takanaka" and "An Insatiable High" in 1977, "On Guitar" and "Brasilian Skies" in 1978, "Jolly Jive" and "All Of Me" in 1979, "T-Wave" in 1980, and "The Rainbow Goblins" and "Alone" in 1981. "Brasilian Skies" and "Saudade" (1982) both brought in American funk and fusion players, including bassist Abraham Laboriel and producer/arranger Narada Michael Walden, and "Saudade" became the first Japanese instrumental album to reach number one on the Oricon Albums Chart.

Takanaka kept recording through the 1990s and 2000s, moving from Kitty Records to EMI in 1985 and founding his own label, Lagoon Records, in 2000. His catalog found a new audience starting in the mid-2010s, when younger listeners began discovering his records online. The clearest single link is "Penguin Dancer," a deep cut off 1981's "Alone," which Grimes sampled as the opening of "Butterfly," the closing track of her 2015 album "Art Angels." That rediscovery built for a decade and reached a turning point in March 2025, when Takanaka played his first-ever US shows, two sold-out nights at The Wiltern in Los Angeles. In 2026 he undertook his first-ever world tour, SUPER TAKANAKA WORLD LIVE 2026, playing London, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland, with every one of the eight stops selling out. As of this profile, he has more than 1.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Takanaka's own early influences run through the British and American rock he grew up on: the Beatles, the Ventures, Cream, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, and particularly Alvin Lee of Ten Years After. That rock foundation is still audible underneath his fusion work, which is why his catalog sits at a genuine crossroads of jazz-funk, Latin jazz, and what would later be branded city pop. His solo records regularly bring international session players into direct contact with his sound: Tower of Power horn players on "An Insatiable High," Brazilian musicians recorded on location in Rio de Janeiro for "Brasilian Skies," and American funk figures like Narada Michael Walden and T.M. Stevens on "Saudade." The through-line across all of it is a melodic, technically virtuosic electric guitar voice built for instrumental records rather than vocal ones, a choice that made his catalog especially suited to sampling once a new generation of producers went looking for it.