Shigenori Kamiya (神谷重徳) is a Japanese guitarist and synthesizer player whose career runs in two bursts of jazz-adjacent work with a long commercial-music stretch in between. The first burst is 1970 to 1972, when he was an electric guitarist in the jazz-rock band of the drummer Takeshi Inomata and a regular on the Tokyo studio scene. The second is 1980 to 1983, when he was making synthesizer records under his own name and playing guitar and synthesizer in the saxophonist Akira Sakata's group Wha-ha-ha. His birth date and birthplace are not publicly documented, so the header above carries no Born field. What is known about his early life comes almost entirely from the liner notes of his own records.

Those notes, as translated on the Rabbit Ears blog, describe a man from a family of artists: the 1982 essay in the Pharaoh no Haka LP names his grandfather as the sculptor Yokoe Yoshizumi, whose works share space with the synthesizers in his renovated Tokyo studio. At Aoyama Academy (Aoyama Gakuin) he fell in love with the guitar and, in the words of the 1980 Mu notes, soon mastered it; the same essay says he also sang in the school chapel for sixteen years and studied science and engineering. The Mu notes say he worked in college with the guitarist Ryo Kawasaki and others, and describe him as a racing driver, both car and motorcycle, whose serious crash in practice left him near death. The 1982 essay dates a racing accident to 1966, after a sixth-place finish at the Japan Grand Prix.

His first documented recordings are from 1970. In March of that year, at Tokyo Studio Centre from the 25th to the 27th, Inomata's Sound Limited recorded its debut, Sounds of Sound L.T.D. (Columbia), with Ryo Kawasaki and Kamiya on electric guitars, Shunzo Ohno and Takashi Kumagai on trumpets, Takao Uematsu on tenor saxophone, Toshiaki Yokota on flute and Yusuke Hoguchi on organ. He is credited again on the Express LP Sound Ltd., recorded on April 4, 11 and 25, 1970, and on "Mustache", the band's track on the live double album Sensational Jazz '70, recorded at Shibuya Public Hall on April 30, 1970. On the June 22, 1970 session for New Rock in Europe: Sound Ltd. 2 (Express), made at Toshiba's studio with the television show Young 720, he is one of two guitarists, with Kimio Mizutani, and he is credited as arranger on Sound Limited's Denon release Sound Special '70 / Popular Hit! Hit! Hit!. Discogs lists Sound Limited among his groups.

Around the same time he turned up in other jazz-rock settings. He plays electric and acoustic guitar on the CBS/Sony Christmas record Rock-In X'mas by the band Love Live Life (1971), with Hideo Ichikawa on keyboards, and for Love Live Life's 10 Chapters of Murder (CBS/Sony, 1972) he is credited with Kosuke Ichihara for composition and arrangement; Discogs tags that record Free Jazz and Jazz-Rock. On the Exciting Up-tight Band's Young A Go Go (CBS/Sony, 1972) he plays electric guitar and organ and arranges, alongside Jun Fukamachi on piano and organ, Shunzo Ohno on trumpet and Toshiaki Yokota on flute. He is the guitarist on Fukamachi's own debut, A Portrait of a Young Man (Polydor, November 1971), with Motohiko Hino on drums. His credits from these years also include folk and pop sessions: Hideko Fujiwara's Watashi no Blues (URC, 1970), Yuzo Kayama's Trip of David (1971), Alice's single "Hashitte Oide Koibito yo" (1972) and an Electone album for Yamaha.

The synthesizer enters the story in 1972. According to Moriaki Takebe's essay in the Pharaoh no Haka LP, Kamiya bought his first synthesizer, an ARP 2600, that year, took it apart to understand it, and was drawn to making his own sounds; the same essay credits him with writing more than 10,000 computer programs. Credits for synthesizer, programming and arranging begin to appear in 1979, with the Makoto Highland Band's Injection (CBS/Sony), where he is credited on synthesizer and as arranger, an operator credit on the Plastic Zoo's Skateboard Junction, and a programming credit on the group Chakra's 1980 album for Victor.

Mu (Canyon, 1980) is the earliest of his albums whose credits and liner notes are documented in detail: he is credited as composer, arranger and synthesizer player. Its sleeve lists a bank of Roland System 700 and System 100 units, a Jupiter 4 and an SH-1, ARP 2500, Omni 2 and Odyssey synthesizers, a Prophet 5, two Roland vocoders and an Apple II computer, and the notes present it as a response to the magazine MU; the engineer Takafumi Fuse is credited with operating the equipment. Discogs files it under Electronic and Jazz, with Fusion, Jazz-Funk and Ambient as styles. Two years later he made Digital Trip: Pharaoh no Haka - Synthesizer Fantasy (Columbia, May 1982), a nine-piece synthesizer interpretation of Keiko Takemiya's manga for the label's Digital Trip series, and he contributed the track エステーリア戦記 to the 1983 compilation Digital Trip Catalogue. In 1982 he and the drummer Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami were co-billed on four Victor LPs in the Rhythm Ware series of numbered rhythm tracks; Discogs describes the Jungle volume as purely drum-machine beats.

Between those records he was in Akira Sakata's circle. In 1980 Sakata, Kamiya and the producer Taku Kashiwabara made the 10-inch Tenoch Sakana for Better Days: Sakata wrote the two tracks on side A and Kamiya the two on side B, "Meuniere" and "Panco", and all three are credited as producers. That same year saw the formation of Wha-ha-ha, a seven-piece group led by Sakata with the vocalist Mishio Ogawa, the keyboardist Shuichi Chino, the percussionist Kiyohiko Senba, the computer operator Fuse, and Kamiya on guitar. The group's records on Better Days are Shinu Toki wa Betsu (April 1981, Kamiya on guitar), Live Dub (recorded live in April 1981, Kamiya on guitar) and Getahaitekonakucha (December 1981), on which he plays synthesizer and voice beside Murakami on drums and Tamio Kawabata on bass. The Getahaitekonakucha sessions were recorded at Columbia Studio and at Kamiya's own studio, which Discogs gives as "abramen", in September and October 1981. A Recommended Records compilation, Wha ha ha (RR 17), followed, bringing the group to Western listeners. In 1981 he also served as synthesizer operator on Hideo Ichikawa and Kidoshu's Yoseiden (Better Days).

The Mu notes say that Kamiya concentrated mainly on music for commercials and won the ACC Award more than once, for clients that include Shiseido, Suntory and Toyota. Two of his pieces, one of them titled for Shiseido, appear on the 2001 compilation Electronic Music in Japan. His later Discogs credits are reissue-era: "Meuniere" appears on Tokyo Rare Groove (1995) and More Better Days (2016), and in 2018 Columbia issued Sakata's Early 1980's, which collects the Tenoch Sakana tracks and the Wha-ha-ha and Sakata Sextet EPs, with Kamiya credited on synthesizer, as composer and as producer.

Kamiya is a guitarist who became a synthesist, and the two instruments mark two different bodies of work. As a guitarist in 1970 to 1972 he plays in the electric jazz-rock idiom of Sound Limited and the Exciting Up-tight Band, where Discogs tags the records Jazz-Rock and Jazz-Funk; with Wha-ha-ha in 1981 the guitar and synthesizer sit inside Sakata's free-leaning, art-rock-tinged setting, tagged Free Jazz. His own albums are another matter: Mu and Pharaoh no Haka are programmed synthesizer music built around a theme (a magazine, a manga), closer to soundtrack and ambient work than to a jazz quartet record, and the Rhythm Ware LPs are drum-machine rhythm collections.

The question of how primarily jazz he is deserves a plain answer. In his favour: of the 52 releases Discogs ties to him, 28 carry a Jazz genre tag; his sideman and group work in 1970 to 1972 and 1980 to 1983 sits in Inomata's, Sakata's and Fukamachi's circles; the 1980 Mu notes themselves describe him as "a jazz guitar player and synthesizer manipulator"; and Discogs files Mu and three of the four Rhythm Ware LPs partly under Jazz. Against: his own leader output is electronic, and by the 1980 notes' account his career went largely to advertising music. The Subgenres above reflect the jazz and jazz-adjacent records that carry his name as player, not the whole of his output.