Masayuki Takayanagi (高柳昌行), known as "Jojo" on some of his record sleeves, was born in Tokyo on December 22, 1932, and turned professional as a guitarist at nineteen, in 1951. He is the figure Japanese free jazz keeps returning to: a musician who began in the cool-jazz clubs of postwar Tokyo, spent the late 1950s arguing that Japanese players should stop copying each new American trend, and from 1969 made some of the loudest and least compromising guitar records of his era. He passed away on June 23, 1991, at the age of 58.

His early career is thinly documented, but the outline is clear. Discogs dates the first of his many New Direction groups to 1954. In the late 1950s he was part of a circle that gathered around Ginparis, a chanson club in the Ginza district, under the name New Century Music Institute (新世紀音楽研究所). With the bassist Hideto Kanai he founded the Jazz Academy in 1960, publishing a statement in Swing Journal that called for a jazz developed independently of American models. One of the Ginparis nights, on June 26, 1963, was recorded by Osamu Uchida and later released by Three Blind Mice as Ginparis Session, credited to Takayanagi and the New Century Music Institute. Accounts of the period place Masahiko Togashi and Masabumi Kikuchi in the same circle.

His first records under his own name come from the end of that decade. Flower Girl, a pressing of one hundred copies by the Masayuki Takayanagi Quintet, was recorded in 1968 with Motohiko Hino on drums and Akira Mitobe on vibraphone; a second album by the same lineup, The Smile I Love, was recorded in 1966 and not issued commercially until 1992. In May 1969 he played guitar on Togashi's We Now Create. A Jazzy Profile of Jojo, recorded for Victor on March 26 and 29, 1970, shows the other side of him: a quartet set of standards such as "My Foolish Heart" and "Embraceable You," played with the clean single-note lines of the cool-jazz school. Writers on his music often connect that style to Lennie Tristano, and he recorded Tristano's "Lennie's Pennies" more than once.

The break came in 1969. One account holds that he heard the Chicago Transit Authority's free-form guitar and decided the scene that had embraced him was no longer worth the effort; whatever the cause, he formed a trio called New Direction with Motoharu Yoshizawa on bass and Sabu Toyozumi on drums. They recorded Independence: Tread On Sure Ground at Teichiku Kaikan Studio on September 18, 1969. Released in 1970, it is generally described as his debut as a leader and one of the first genuine free jazz records made in Japan. In the same winter he recorded Guitar Workshop (January and February 1970) with Kiyoshi Sugimoto, Ryo Kawasaki and Yoshiaki Masuo. His own track on it is called "Mass Projection," a name he would attach to his most extreme work, and the last two tracks put all four guitarists together, one of them a Masabumi Kikuchi piece titled "Young Blood." The trio played Tokyo's jazz coffee shops at a volume reported to shake paint off the ceiling, and Takayanagi gave the band two instructions: play forte at all times, and never repeat a phrase.

The records that now define his reputation date from 1970. The trio's Station '70 sets in Shibuya, recorded on March 11 and 12 with the saxophonist Mototeru Takagi joining for part of one, were first issued in 1994 and 1995 as Call In Question and Live Independence and collected in 2022 on a three-LP Black Editions set. On June 28, 1970, at Kosei Nenkin Hall, he played a duo concert with the alto saxophonist Kaoru Abe, released as Kaitai Teki Kohkan, and at Station '70 on July 9 the two recorded the long sets DIW issued in 2001 as Mass Projection and Gradually Projection. Abe, who passed away in 1978, remains the most celebrated of his partners.

The 1970s brought a second phase around a group he called New Direction for the Arts and later New Direction Unit. Free Form Suite, recorded live at Aoi Studio in Tokyo on May 19, 1972 and issued by Three Blind Mice, opens with a blues and a standard before moving into modal and free playing and closes with a twenty-three minute suite; Kenji Mori plays reeds and Hiroshi Yamazaki and Joe Mizuki the drums. That same year he sat in the guitar chair for two Gil Evans dates in Tokyo. On June 26 and 29, Gil Evans arranged, conducted and played piano on Kimiko Kasai's Satin Doll at CBS/Sony's studio, with Billy Harper on tenor saxophone and flute, Kohsuke Mine on alto and soprano saxophone, and Hiroshi Fukumura on trombone. On July 5 Evans recorded Masabumi Kikuchi + Gil Evans at Victor Studio, with Kikuchi on electric piano, Takayanagi and Sadanori Nakamure on electric guitars and Togashi among the drummers. The New Direction Unit recorded Eclipse on March 14, 1975, and played the concert released as the two-part Axis: Another Revolvable Thing on September 5. The quartet of Takayanagi, Mori, Nobuyoshi Ino and Yamazaki made the April and May 1975 sessions that appeared only in 1991 as April Is The Cruellest Month, an album once scheduled for the American label ESP-Disk until the label collapsed.

Not everything was free playing. In November 1977 he joined the pianist Masaru Imada and the bassists Nobuyoshi Ino and Hideto Kanai on Sonnet by Tee & Company for Three Blind Mice, and at the end of the decade he led a more orthodox group, Second Concept, which made Cool Jojo in December 1979. On May 26, 1980, the New Direction Unit played the Moers New Jazz Festival in West Germany, and Three Blind Mice released the concert as Live at Moers Festival. Lonely Woman followed in 1982, recorded on August 21 and 22 at Sound Sky Studio in Tokyo: solo electric guitar, with the title tune by Ornette Coleman alongside Tristano's "Lennie's Pennies." On April 29, 1983, he recorded a long improvisation in a Tokyo studio with the German bassist Peter Kowald and the cellist Keiki Midorikawa, issued only in 2012 as Encounter And Improvisation. A month later, on May 27, he and Togashi played the duo concert at Zojoji Hall released as Pulsation, and in November 1984 he was the guitarist in Togashi's Improvisation Jazz Orchestra at Sogetsu Hall, with Masahiko Satoh conducting and Kazutoki Umezu among the saxophonists, a concert released as Follow The Dream.

The last phase was a solo project called Action Direct, in which he worked with several guitars, tape, effects and a guitar laid flat on a table. Action Direct, recorded at Zojoji Hall on October 5, 1985 and released in 1987, is its first full statement. In March and May 1986 he recorded the duo and solo sides of Experimental Performance with John Zorn. His final recordings include Inanimate Nature (August 4, 1990, at JeanJean in Tokyo), Reason For Being, a duo with Ino made in 1990, and a trio night with Ino and Kikuchi at Jazz Inn Lovely in Nagoya on October 9, 1990, released in 2020 as Live at Jazz Inn Lovely 1990. The Jinya Disc label has since issued a long run of recordings from his own tapes, among them the 1991 sessions on Dangerous.

He also taught. Japanese sources list guitarists including Kazumi Watanabe and Kazuo Imai among those who studied with him, and Otomo Yoshihide was his student and assistant for several years before the two parted ways. Otomo recorded and adjusted the sound for Takayanagi's Hokkaido tour of November 1984, later released as Meta Improvisation, and in 2024 restored and co-produced the 1973 concert issued as Projection. His writings and record reviews were collected in Han-ongaku Ronshu in 2006.

Takayanagi's playing divides into two periods. Before 1969 it was cool jazz in the Tristano manner, with single-note lines and a clean tone, and he never wholly abandoned it: the standards on A Jazzy Profile of Jojo and the Tristano and Ornette Coleman material on Lonely Woman sit on either side of his noisiest records. After the turn he built what he called "non-section music," in which melody, harmony and steady rhythm gave way to sound itself. Descriptions of the New Direction trio agree on the technique: a metal chain dragged across the strings, sticks used on the guitar, long passes of feedback, and a rule that nobody should repeat a phrase.

The guitarist who made Mass Projection with Kaoru Abe also made a duo record of bebop and standards with Nobuyoshi Ino in 1990. In his last years the guitar became a tabletop instrument and the playing moved toward pure noise, which is why he is regularly named alongside Keith Rowe as one of the first guitarists to treat the instrument that way. The Jazz Academy statement of 1960 and the Ginparis circle point to a lifelong argument: that Japanese jazz should find its own language rather than follow American fashion. Flamenco and Ornette Coleman are also cited among his influences.

His influence runs through the next generation of Japanese noise and improvised music. Otomo Yoshihide studied with him, and Keiji Haino and Jim O'Rourke are among the musicians who have cited him; O'Rourke wrote the English liner notes for Three Improvised Variations On A Theme Of Qadhafi.