Mitsuaki Katayama (片山光明) was a jazz drummer from Kesennuma, a fishing port in Miyagi Prefecture, who worked for most of his career under the stage name Bison Katayama (バイソン片山). The two names belong to one person: the obituary in the Tohoku daily Kahoku Shimpo gives "Bison Katayama" with the real name Mitsuaki Katayama, Disk Union lists his debut album as "片山光明 (バイソン片山)", and a page from his brother's temple describes the album First Flight as Bison's work. His 1979 trio record carries the real name. The records he led from 1992 on, and most of his sideman credits from 1989, carry the Bison name.

He was born on August 6, 1951, the youngest of six children. A 2011 profile in the local paper Townnews says he took up music in middle school, through his second-eldest sister, and formed a band with his brothers. His eldest brother, Hidemitsu Katayama, born in 1940, is the abbot of Jifukuji, a Zen temple in Kesennuma. Katayama graduated from Miyagi Kesennuma High School and moved to Tokyo in 1974, at 23. There he studied drums under Motohiko Hino at AN Contemporary Music, and, according to his own profile, timpani and snare drum with principal players from a Tokyo orchestra and NHK. He told Townnews he practiced on little more than three hours of sleep a day while playing jazz clubs, and that his first steady job was as drummer for a pianist at a bar in Roppongi.

His official profile names the pianist Kichiro Sugino (杉野喜知郎) and the club Passatempo in Roppongi: Katayama was the regular drummer of the Sugino trio there from 1976 to 1980. On June 24, 1979, the trio, with Kishio Kitahara (北原季子夫) on bass, recorded First Flight at the Kesennuma Civic Hall, in Katayama's home town. It was released on Johnny's Disk Record, catalogue number JD-03, an independent label run by Ken Terui, who owned the jazz cafe Kaiunbashi no Johnny in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, and who is credited as the album's producer. Katayama was 27. The five tracks are two Katayama originals ("Unknown Point" and the ten-minute title piece), two by Sugino ("Arizona High Way" and "It's Over") and Kitahara's "Louis". Hiroshi Azuma wrote the liner notes and Kazuo Aizawa is credited with the cover artwork.

The album has been reissued repeatedly since 2010. Solid Records put it out on CD that year, with liner notes by Minoru Wakasugi, and "Unknown Point" was picked for BBE's 2018 compilation J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan 1969-1984. Studio Mule pressed a remastered LP in a run of 500 in 2018, and Ultra-Vybe issued it again on CD in 2018 and 2020 and, in 2026, on hybrid SACD in a "Sugo! Nippon Jazz" series. Retailers describe it variously as a Japanese "black jazz" masterpiece, a mix of post-bop, fusion, samba and ballads, and, in Ultra-Vybe's wording, a record whose title piece is a dance-jazz classic long popular with DJs. Catfish Records and Tower Records Japan both call Sugino a "phantom pianist" in their listings, and Tower's description of one reissue refers to him as the late Kichiro Sugino.

He kept working with Sugino into the early 1980s. He is the drummer on the Sugino trio's side of Piano Crossing, a 1980 direct-to-disc recording on the Lob label, and on Autumn 3:00 P.M., recorded for Johnny's Disk on August 30, 1982 with the singer Mayumi Sonoda, where he is also credited as composer of "The Wooden Gong Dreamy". From 1981 to 1986, his profile says, he was the regular drummer in the trio of the American pianist Don Abney at the Sanno Hotel in Akasaka, and the CDJournal biography adds that he joined the quartet of the tenor saxophonist Hidehiko Matsumoto in 1984. In 1984 he also played drums on The Shiny Stockings' album Red Roses For A Blue Lady.

He formed his own Bison Band in 1985, and his profile says he moved to the United States that year and worked mainly with his own trios and groups from then on; it does not say how long he stayed, and by 2011 he was living in Sagamihara, Kanagawa. In 1986 the Bison Band won the Grand Prix at the first Sapporo Beer Jazz Audition. His profile and CDJournal both list the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1987 and the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1990, where CDJournal says he played in the Monterey All-Star Band. He took part in the pianist Hank Jones's Japan tours in 1990 and 1992 according to his profile and Japanese Wikipedia, and in February 1992 King Records issued To The Sea, credited to the Bison Band and Hank Jones. Jones is on piano alongside the band's own pianist Hideki Honma, with Fumio Hayashi on alto saxophone, Masayuki Suzuki on tenor, Shuichiro Ise on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Shubi Arima on electric piano.

His best-documented leader record after First Flight is Urban Labyrinth (Paddle Wheel, King Records, February 22, 1995), by the Bison Trio: Katayama on drums with Cedar Walton on piano and Buster Williams on bass. It mixes standards ("Autumn In New York", "Misterioso", "Autumn Leaves") with two Katayama originals, "Traveling Wind" and the title tune, both arranged by Honma. Yozo Iwanami wrote the liner notes. A Korean edition on Saturn Records appeared in 1995 as well.

In the 2000s he led the Bison Trio on All Round Three (2003) and, as Bison & Jazz Associates, on a 2007 album titled Anata to Yoru to Ongaku to. In 2004 he began a regular engagement as Bison Katayama 3 at Shiba Park Hotel and later Shiodome Park Hotel in Tokyo, with annual Christmas dinner shows with the singer Mari Sakiri, according to Japanese Wikipedia. His profile also lists the Aichi World Expo in 2005, appearances on the radio network JFM with a group led by Sadao Watanabe and with the Greg Mackenzie trio in 2007 to 2009, and the Istanbul Jazz Festival in 2010. He appears as a sideman on Eri Matsubara's The Gentleman Is A Dope (2004), on two albums by the alto saxophonist Kunihiko Kamewada (2010 and 2011), and on Blue Notion by the pianist Sir Charles Thompson with Yoshio Toyama's Dixieland Saints (2014).

A later Bison Trio album, Dearly Beloved Jazz, was released on July 1, 2017, with a new lineup. According to his official site it was recorded at the live house Otokurabu Warane in Yokohama Yamate on a Bechstein piano about 120 years old, and was the group's first new album in 14 years. It is a set of ten standards, including "Tricotism", "I Love You, Porgy" and "Love Walked In". Later sideman appearances include Balluchon by the pianist Michiko Ogawa (2018), I Will, a Lennon and McCartney trio album by the pianist Michiko Tatsuno (2021), and 8 Anniversary by the singer and keyboardist Mao Yashiro (2023).

Katayama also worked outside jazz clubs. His profile lists television commercials for NTT Townpage (2002) and Nisshin Salad Oil (2001), a music video for Mr.Children's "Kurumi" in which he played a middle-aged drummer (it won Best of the Year at Space Shower TV's 2004 video awards), and a role as Mr. Omochi in Alain Corneau's French film Fear and Trembling (2003). He was a "Minato Kesennuma" ambassador for his home town. After the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami he told Townnews he could not reach a sister for more than three weeks, that his relatives were safe, and that he delivered supplies to Kesennuma several times and sent a large bus in the summer. He played drums in Kassapa, the sermon-and-music unit led by his brother Hidemitsu; the group's own page dates his membership to 2011, and the Townnews profile says the two had been performing together since 2010.

Mitsuaki "Bison" Katayama passed away on August 17, 2024, at 4:50 in the afternoon, at a hospital in Sagamihara, Kanagawa. He was 73. The Kahoku Shimpo obituary gives the cause as multiple organ failure and says the funeral and farewell ceremony were held on the morning of August 21.

The only teacher named in any source is Motohiko Hino (1946 to 1999), and Katayama's own account of his training adds orchestral timpani and snare. The descriptions of his playing that survive are from sellers and reissue labels: Soundohm's copy for the Studio Mule LP calls the drumming on "Unknown Point" tight and powerful, and one of Tower Records Japan's reissue listings describes his drumming as powerful.

Two phases of his own work are documented. First Flight is a trio record built from originals, among them a samba-flavored "Unknown Point", a ten-minute title piece, and Sugino's ballad "It's Over". Ultra-Vybe calls the title piece a dance-jazz classic long popular with DJs. The Bison Trio records are a different thing, a drummer's trio playing mostly standards, with the American pianist Cedar Walton and bassist Buster Williams on Urban Labyrinth and a Bechstein piano on Dearly Beloved Jazz. Around those leader dates, the documented career is largely that of a working accompanist: regular drummer for Sugino, Abney and Matsumoto, then a sideman on singers' records and saxophonists' quartet dates.