Shinpei Ruike (類家心平) was born on April 27, 1976, in Hachinohe, in Aomori Prefecture at the northern tip of Honshu. His father, Kenjiro Ruike, was a printmaker, and his father's record collection, jazz LPs included, sat alongside the school brass band where Ruike began on trumpet around the age of ten. In high school a Miles Davis record settled what he wanted to do, and after graduating he joined the Maritime Self-Defense Force, where he was assigned to its band. He spent six years there, in the Ominato band, before leaving in 2001 for Tokyo.

Tokyo took him across the map in a hurry. He played jazz sessions, pop dates, avant-garde projects and club music, and in 2003 joined urb, a six-piece jazz jam band with Ruike in the trumpet chair. Sony Jazz gave the group a major-label debut in February 2004 with the mini album urb, followed in July by bru, and urb played the Bangkok Jazz Festival in December of that year. The full-length afterdark arrived in January 2005 and the band went quiet in 2006, by which time Ruike had already started his own group.

The mid-2000s also brought him into the orbit of the saxophonist and bandleader Naruyoshi Kikuchi. Ruike played in Kikuchi's Dub Sextet from 2007, on The Revolution Will Not Be Computerized (ewe, 2007), Dub Orbits and In Tokyo (both 2008), and from 2010 in the large electric ensemble DCPRG. In 2008 he was in the Routine Jazz Quintet and Sextet, and he took part in guitarist SUGIZO's projects, an early sign of how comfortably he moves between jazz rooms and larger-stage pop and rock settings.

His own records began with Distorted Grace (Rambling Records, 2009), cut by the Shinpei Ruike 4 Piece Band with Hakuei Kim on electric piano, Koji Tetsui on bass and Daisuke Yoshioka on drums. Sector b (Airplane Label, 2011) followed with the same quartet. In 2013 the group became a quintet with the addition of guitarist Takuya "Tak" Tanaka, and with the pianist George Nakajima (中嶋錠二) the band now known as RS5pb recorded 4 AM live at Velvet Sun in Ogikubo, Tokyo, in August 2013, captured in DSD and released on T5Jazz Records that November. UNDA (T5Jazz, 2016), the band's first studio album, includes a reworking of Miles Davis's "Maiysha" among nine Ruike originals, and a vinyl release titled RS5pb followed in 2020. Between the quintet records came N.40° (Apollo Sounds, 2014), a duo with Nakajima, and in 2022 a second duo disc, Shinpei Ruike & George Nakajima / Duo (Core Port), recorded in August 2021 at Nango Bunka Hall in Hachinohe, the town where he was born. Lady's Blues (BS Jazz Support) is the acoustic side of the same working band: a quartet recording of standards and jazz repertoire made at the Shibuya club Body & Soul.

Alongside his own groups he became one of Tokyo's busiest trumpeters. He played the trumpet parts for the 2012 anime Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon), a jazz-centred series, and again for its 2018 live-action film. From 2015 he was a member of Kyoto Jazz Sextet, the project of Shuya Okino of Kyoto Jazz Massive, on Mission (2015), Unity (2017), Rising (2018), Succession (Blue Note Japan, 2022, with Takeo Moriyama on drums) and the 2025 twelve inch Dosojin no Uta. He is also on the Ronin Arkestra records led by Mark de Clive-Lowe, on Cowboy Bebop music, and on albums by UA, Bonnie Pink and Gen Hoshino.

The strongest thread of the past decade runs through the avant-garde. He is the trumpeter in Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet (ONJQ), with Osamu Imagome on trombone, Hiroaki Mizutani on bass and Yasuhiro Yoshigaki on drums. The quintet recorded Hat and Beard in November 2018 on a three-city tour of Tokyo, Nagoya and Kyoto, released in 2020, then toured Poland in February 2024 for the five-LP box Live in Poland and recorded El Derecho de Vivir en Paz on a December 2024 tour of Kyoto, Nagoya and Tokyo. In February 2026 he and Otomo released the duo album Ramune and the Power Plant (Ramune to Hatsudensho, Little Stone Records), a live recording from KAKULULU in Tokyo on October 13, 2024, on which Ruike plays trumpet and electronics against Otomo's turntables and guitar.

He has been equally at home with the generation before. He recorded with Isao Suzuki on the DSD album Plays "Ave Maria" (King Records, 2015), joined Sachi Hayasaka and Yosuke Yamashita as guest trumpeter for the 2016 2.26 Birthday Live 30th Anniversary, and played in Fumio Itabashi's orchestra and small groups, including the 2023 To and U albums made with the tap dancer Reona. According to the liner note of Burning Bookshop (Old Heaven Books, 2018), he and two other members of Yamashita's quartet, the bassist Hiroaki Mizutani and the drummer Shinnosuke Takahashi, stayed on after a set at a jazz festival in China in October 2017 to improvise with the local musicians Dan Lao and Deng Boyu; the cassette holds three long improvisations.

2026 has been one of his most visible years on record. In March he recorded Silver Pathos (Ginshu) with Akira Sakata on alto saxophone, bass clarinet and voice and Jun Inui on drums, live at a gallery in Ginza, and Sister Records issued it in July. On September 15, 2026, UFO Creations released two of his improvised collaborations: Cat's Drama, with the alto saxophonist Eiichi Hayashi and the calligrapher and painter Mama Kin, and Nonlocal, a trio built across Minneapolis, Tokyo and Kyoto with the guitarist Max Devereaux and the drummer Shin Kokawa. He turned 50 in April.

Ruike's tone and attack come from Miles Davis, the first jazz musician he loved, and the review of UNDA on the Jazz Convention site hears the Miles of the electric years brought up to date: long, lyrical notes set against short, sharp bursts, the trumpet often run through effects, a rhythm section that moves between funk, rock and drum and bass. A Motion Blue Yokohama preview of the quintet likewise described it as young, raw and rock-influenced. The guitar passages that Tak Tanaka brings to UNDA, which the reviewer likens to Japanese noise music and heavy-metal riffs, are part of why that record sounds rougher and more nervous than the quartet albums.

The same player is a straight-ahead balladeer in a duo. On N.40° and Duo with George Nakajima he plays "Flamenco Sketches," "Nearness of You," "Boplicity," "Bye Bye Blackbird" and his own pieces in a quiet, open conversation with the piano, and on Lady's Blues he works through "Speak No Evil," "Old Fisherman's Daughter" and "I Fall in Love Too Easily" over long takes.

In Otomo Yoshihide's quintet and in the 2026 duo with Otomo he moves the other way, into free improvisation, electronics and long-form collective playing, where the trumpet becomes one voice in a dense group sound. Pop and rock sessions, anime music and dance-floor jazz round out a career whose range is its calling card. Jazz is nonetheless the centre of gravity: Discogs files every one of his own albums under jazz, and the groups he has joined, from Kyoto Jazz Sextet to Otomo's quintet, all work in that field.