Sunao Wada (和田直, Wada Sunao in Japanese order) was a guitarist from Tsu, in Mie Prefecture, where he was born on 13 January 1934. He took up the guitar at about ten. He was eleven when the war ended, and in the obituary the Chunichi Shimbun ran after his death, the paper says it was guitar music on the radio that moved him. After the war he became one of the leading guitarists in Nagoya. He graduated from Meijo University there, and had already begun playing jazz in the city while still a student. In 1965 he moved his base to Tokyo, then came back to Nagoya.

In Nagoya he became a club owner as well as a player. The Chunichi obituary says he began running a jazz club in 1971. That was Coco, the room that gave his first leader album its title, and it later became Jazz Spot Swing in the Higashisakura district, which the paper noted was in its 50th year when he passed away. Japanese Wikipedia adds that he worked alongside the saxophonist Kenji Mori while running the club. A younger Nagoya guitarist, Masahiro Andoh, is said in Japanese Wikipedia's article on Andoh to have met Wada at the café-club MusicClub COCO and to have come to regard him as a mentor; that account rests on Andoh's biography rather than on a record credit.

His recorded career is built around one label. Three Blind Mice, the Tokyo audiophile jazz label, issued Coco's Blues (TBM-12, recorded in 1972 and released in 1973) as his first album as leader: a quartet with Takehiro Honda on piano, Mitsuaki Furuno on bass and Arihide Kurata on drums, expanded to a sextet on two tracks with Kenji Mori on alto saxophone and Kunji Shigi on flugelhorn. In March 1974 he recorded Blues World (TBM-25, 25 March) with the organist Ushio Sakai, the tenor saxophonist Takao Uematsu, Furuno and Kurata. The next day, 26 March 1974, at the Nihon Toshi Center Hall in Tokyo, he joined the cellist and bassist Isao Suzuki and the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto trio for "Midnight Sugar", the 16-minute second track of side A of Now's the Time (TBM-29), which is billed to Suzuki and Wada together. Side B of that LP is a separate session by a George Otsuka quintet with extra horns, on which Wada is not credited.

The label kept him on its list through the decade. Blues for Bird (TBM-49) is a live recording from the Nihon Toshi Center Hall in Tokyo on 26 May 1975, shared between the Sunao Wada Quintet, the singer Hitomi Ueda and the Ushio Sakai Trio. Four Scenes (TBM-75) was made on 14 September 1976 at Studio Wing in Nagoya with the saxophonist and flautist Minoru Ikeno, the pianist Sizuo Nakayama, the bassist Kazuaki Yamamoto, the drummer Koji Yamada and Ueda on vocals, whistle and cowbell. Blues-Blues-Blues (TBM-5001) followed on 26 and 27 July 1977 at Epicurus Studio in Tokyo, with Isao Suzuki on bass and cello, Masaru Imada on piano and organ, and Tetsujiro Obara on drums. Several of these albums have since been reissued on CD in the label's Supreme Collection series, and in 2023 the label's Rebirth of "TBM" compilation included his "Sunset on the Street" from Four Scenes.

After the 1970s his recording appearances are fewer and more occasional. On 1 March 1992 he played at the 60th birthday party of Minako Kuno at Tenderly, where a quintet of Wada, Kenji Mori on clarinet, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass, Yoshihiko Naya on piano and Jess Kurata on drums was recorded; Victor issued it as A Song for Mina, a CD marked not for sale. In November 1993 he recorded Blues Meeting (TBM CD 5040) for Three Blind Mice, an album billed to Ushio Sakai featuring Sunao Wada, with Sakai on electric organ and the alto saxophonist Atsuo Shirai, the vibraphonist Kan Fujii, the drummer Hiroaki Panryu and, on two tracks, the bassist Takashi Mizuhashi. In 2012 he is credited on electric guitar on Soul Kitchen by the group Kankawa.

Separately from the jazz records, Discogs credits him as the composer of songs recorded by Japanese popular and mood-song acts between 1968 and 1983, among them "Hana Geshō" (on 1968 recordings by Teruo Yoda and the Moody Kings and by Golden Sounds), "Koi Asobi" (recorded by 三音たかお, 1971), "Namida no Cherry Boy" (Telephone Sisters, 1972) and "Bōkyō Nazare" (recorded by 神年成, 1983). Japanese Wikipedia likewise describes him as a songwriter as well as a guitarist.

Sunao Wada passed away on 29 April 2021, aged 87, of acute respiratory failure caused by pneumonia, according to the Chunichi Shimbun obituary published the next day. The funeral was held for close family only, and a farewell gathering was planned at a Nagoya jazz club. The paper credited him with helping build Nagoya's jazz culture.

Wada's records are blues-centred jazz, and the titles say as much: Coco's Blues, Blues World, Blues for Bird, Blues-Blues-Blues, Blues Meeting, with "Blues for Charlie Christian" on Blues World and Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce" on Coco's Blues. Discogs classes his Three Blind Mice albums variously as bop, contemporary jazz, soul-jazz and electric blues, and dealer notes for the CD reissues describe an unhurried, slightly grainy guitar tone and a blues idiom that draws on soul-jazz and modal jazz as well as the twelve-bar form.

Much of his recorded work sits in an organ-and-guitar setting: Ushio Sakai's organ is on Blues World (a Hammond), Blues for Bird and Blues Meeting. Four Scenes is the outlier, a quintet date with Fender-Rhodes colouring, quiet Latin-leaning percussion and a wordless vocal used as another instrument, which one dealer's note offers as a counterweight to the idea that he was strictly a hard-bop player.

His jazz identity is clear across the whole discography: every album under his own name is a jazz record on a jazz label. The popular-song composing credits from 1968 to 1983 are a real but minor side of his output.