Takehiro Honda (本田竹広) was born Takashi Honda (本田昂) on August 21, 1945, in Miyako, a port town on the Iwate coast. He performed under the stage names 本田竹彦 (Takehiko) and 本田竹曠 at different points before settling on 本田竹広, and the early Trio Records sleeves read simply T. Honda or Takehiko Honda. All of them are the same pianist, and Takehiro Honda is the romanisation used by Discogs, Wikipedia and most reissues.

He decided to become a musician at twelve and moved to Tokyo, where he began studying with the teacher Kazuko Nagamine with the Kunitachi College of Music in mind. He went on through Kunitachi's attached high school and then the college itself, aiming at a classical career, until jazz and its freedom of rhythm and harmony pulled him away from it. He started working as a jazz pianist at twenty or twenty-one, first in the group of the saxophonist Kazunori Takeda and then in a trio of his own. In 1968 he formed his own trio, with Eijiro Hagiwara on bass and Hiroshi Murakami on drums; the same year he formed the group-sounds band The Mojo and worked as an accompanist to the singer Mieko Hirota.

On August 18, 1969, he married the jazz singer Chico Honda, the younger sister of Sadao Watanabe. Their son, the drummer Tamaya Honda, was born that November, and the same year Honda signed with Trio Records. His first record as a leader, made on December 9, 1969, was made with Watanabe's rhythm section: T. Honda Meets Rhythm Section Featuring S. Watanabe, with Watanabe on alto saxophone, Yoshio Suzuki on bass, Fumio Watanabe on drums and Yoshiaki Masuo on guitar.

The Trio Records years were prolific. The Trio (March 10, 1970) paired him with Suzuki and Fumio Watanabe and opened with a piece titled "Hakai to Jojyo," Destruction and Lyricism, which has since given its name to a 2022 release of a live set he played in 1969. Jodo (1970) put him with the bassist Reggie Workman and the drummer Motohiko Hino and ran to long-form pieces, among them the title track at 11 minutes 33 seconds. Flying to the Sky (March 1, 1971) was a quartet date with the German tenor saxophonist Gerd Dudek, the bassist Günter Lenz and Hino. I Love You followed on April 30, 1971. This Is Honda, a trio record with Suzuki and Fumio Watanabe made at Iino Hall on March 14, 1972, won the Swing Journal Jazz Disc Award for best recording and is among his best-known records.

From 1973 to 1978 he was the pianist in Watanabe's quartet. His name is on Watanabe's Open Road (recorded at Hibiya Kokaido on May 2, 1973, with Kohsuke Mine on tenor and soprano saxophones and Hiroshi Fukumura on trombone), Pamoja, Recital, Echo, and the concert released in 2016 as Live in Nemuro 1977. Between those dates he led his own sessions. Salaam Salaam (East Wind, recorded June 16, 1974, at Victor Studio in Tokyo) is a trio record with the American bassist Juini Booth and the drummer Eric Gravatt, built from three long pieces of 13, 10 and 18 minutes. In January 1976 he recorded Down Stretch in Tokyo as the pianist in a trio led by the bassist Eddie Gomez, with Eliot Zigmund on percussion.

In May 1977 he recorded for two days at Vanguard Studio in New York with Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. The sessions were split across two Flying Disk albums: Another Departure (1977), made up entirely of his own compositions, and Reaching for Heaven (1978). A third New York record followed, It's Great Outside (1978), on which he played piano, clavinet and organ with Cornell Dupree and Yoshiaki Masuo on guitars, Anthony Jackson on electric bass, Steve Jordan on drums and Ray Mantilla on congas.

Also in 1978 he formed Native Son with Mine, the guitarist Motonobu Ohde, the bassist Tamio Kawabata and the drummer Hiroshi Murakami. The group's self-titled debut, recorded in late 1978 and released on JVC in 1979, has Honda on Fender Rhodes, Yamaha CP-70, clavinet, celesta and synthesizer, and his official site calls it a record-breaking hit for Japanese fusion; Savanna Hot-Line followed the same year and the band appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Native Son kept going through the 1980s with live and studio albums including Coast to Coast (Live in USA) (1980), Shining (1982), Carnival: Live at Montreux (1983), Gumbo (1984) and Daybreak (1985), on which his son Tamaya was the drummer, and it ended with Aguncha in 1987. A quartet of Honda, Mine, Murakami and Yoshio Suzuki, recorded live at Montreux, was released as Square Game, credited to The 4. In the same decade he made two standards albums for CBS/Sony with the bassist Nobuyoshi Ino and Takeo Moriyama, My Funny Valentine and In a Sentimental Mood, recorded on April 3 and 4, 1985.

In 1990 he moved to the Fun House label. Back on My Fingers (1990) and Earthian Air (1991) were trio records with Suzuki and Hino, and See All Kind (1992) was his first solo piano album. In 1992 he formed the sextet EASE with Mine, the saxophonist Takao Uematsu, the trombonist Shigeharu Mukai, the bassist Tsutomu Okada and Murakami, and its 1993 album won a Swing Journal Gold Disc. In 1995 he put together a jazz-funk band in which he played Fender Rhodes throughout, and recorded Boogie-Boga-Boo with Paul Jackson on bass and Hino on drums.

Illness interrupted the decade. He suffered the first of two cerebral hemorrhages in the mid-1990s and the second on July 7, 1997, which left him with paralysis on his left side. He returned to the stage in December 1997 at the release event for a best-of album, gave a comeback concert at Hoya Komorebi Hall in Tokyo on March 3, 1998, and by 1999 had formed a world-music band, The PURE, and was playing again. In 2000 he released Now on the Blues with the bassist Yasushi Yonekura and his son, and founded a musicians' club for Kunitachi alumni. He took part in the first Miyako Jazz Festival in his home town in 2002, where his official site says he appeared alongside Terumasa Hino and others, produced a jazz festival at Taro, Iwate, in 2003, and recorded Furusato (On My Mind) for Teichiku in 2004. On July 31, 2005, he gave a piano recital at Kioi Hall in Tokyo, issued that December as My Piano My Life 05: Piano Recital, his last album. He passed away on January 12, 2006, of acute heart failure, at sixty.

His catalogue has kept returning to print. A 2007 live set from the Kagoshima club USA, recorded on June 27, 1974, and Live 1974 (Owl Wing Record, 2020) came out after his death, and Hakai to Jojyo, a 1969 concert at Kinokuniya Hall with Mine, Murakami and others, was issued in 2022. The Trio was reissued on CD in January 2026 with liner notes by Tamaya Honda. He should not be confused with the saxophonist Toshiyuki Honda, on whose 1986 The Super Quartet he played piano, or with the drummer Tamaya Honda, his son.

Honda worked in two distinct registers and moved between them freely. The Trio Records albums of 1970 to 1972 are acoustic piano-trio jazz in the hard bop and post-bop mold, with long takes on standards and original pieces, and Jodo, Flying to the Sky and Salaam Salaam stretch the form into modal, open-ended pieces that run past ten minutes. Discogs files the albums under hard bop, post bop and contemporary jazz, and a 2018 mix for The Vinyl Factory compared his playful, genre-crossing approach to Pharoah Sanders.

From 1977 he added electric keyboards. Another Departure credits him on keyboards and mixes acoustic piano with Fender Rhodes, and It's Great Outside adds clavinet and organ over an American funk rhythm section. Native Son made that electric sound his public identity in Japan: the 1979 debut is built around his Fender Rhodes, clavinet and synthesizer, and the band remains the group most associated with him. Even then he did not leave acoustic jazz behind. The 1985 trio albums with Nobuyoshi Ino and Takeo Moriyama are straightforward standards sets, and his late albums See All Kind (solo piano) and My Piano My Life 05 return to unaccompanied playing. Another Departure consists entirely of his own compositions, and he is credited as composer on Salaam Salaam, It's Great Outside and Earthian Air as well.

He was also a bandleader and organiser rather than only a pianist for hire. He founded Native Son, EASE, a jazz-funk band, The PURE, and a Kunitachi alumni club, and he produced a festival in his home prefecture.