Tatsuya Takahashi (高橋達也), born Tatsuro Takahashi (高橋達朗), was a tenor saxophonist and the bandleader behind Tokyo Union, one of Japan's best-known big bands. He was born in Tsuruoka, in Yamagata Prefecture, on December 27, 1931, and made his professional debut in 1951 at a United States military camp in Sendai. From there he moved to Tokyo, and by 1961 he was working with Keiichiro Ebihara.

In 1964 he joined Tokyo Union, a big band formed that year, and in 1966 he became its fourth leader. From then on it worked under his name, as Tatsuya Takahashi and Tokyo Union (高橋達也と東京ユニオン), and he led it until the end of 1989.

The band's early records already show how little it cared about staying in one lane. The Rock Seasons (Express, recorded in 1972 and issued on March 5, 1973) is a gatefold jazz-rock set of sixteen pieces, twelve of them titled with a single kanji, arranged by Kiyoshi Yamaya, with Tsunehide Matsuki on guitar and Takahashi as leader and tenor soloist. In 1976 and 1977 the band made three records for Three Blind Mice, the audiophile label that became the home of its best-known work. Got the Spirit was recorded at Yamaha Hall in Tokyo on May 18, 1976, and includes the twelve-minute "Tomorrow's Blues Today" and the piece "Lullaby East" that rare-groove listeners still pass around. Maiden Voyage, recorded on December 4 and 5, 1976, takes Herbie Hancock's title tune, "Giant Steps", "A Child Is Born", "One Mint Julep" and Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" through full big-band arrangements with an electric rhythm section.

Scandinavian Suite is the record that made the band's critical reputation. Recorded at Epicurus Studio in Tokyo on May 15 and 22, 1977, it presents six pieces by the composer Bingo Miki (三木敏悟), among them "Midnight Sunrise", "Sketches of Munch" and "Andersen Fantasia", with Mickie Yoshino on synthesizer. Japanese reference sources record that it won the Swing Journal Jazz Disc Award and the Japan Jazz Award for 1977. English-language reference sources add that Swing Journal named the band Best Big Band nine years in a row.

The band went abroad next. It first played the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1978; a Zen label LP, Montreux The Best '78, documents a July 16, 1978 set featuring the singer Mari Nakamoto. In 1980 Takahashi took the full band to California, where it played with Herbie Hancock, Slide Hampton and the alto saxophonist Richie Cole, appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and recorded Black Pearl at The Automatt in San Francisco on September 23 to 26, 1980. Hancock plays piano and electric piano on the record, Hampton plays trombone, and Hampton and Garnett Brown wrote arrangements. The package included a booklet documenting the San Francisco concert, with liner-note credits for Hancock, Hampton, Cole and the critic Leonard Feather.

Around those peaks the band was a working studio ensemble. It made two albums with the arranger and keyboardist Chikara Ueda in 1978, Soul Porter, a set of Cole Porter songs, and Funpico, both for Warner Bros.; backed the singer Sho Kubota on September Steps for RCA; recorded The City for Zen in April 1979; and in the early 1980s played television music, including the Teichiku releases tied to the crime drama Seibu Keisatsu and a 1983 album, Jam Trip The Pumpkin Wine, for Columbia. It also made straight big-band jazz records: Up in the Blues (Polydor, 1981), Swing on Swing (Carnival, 1982), with arrangements by Norio Maeda, Keeping Count (Paddle Wheel, 1986), with arrangements by Dave Matthews, and Plays Miles & Gil (Paddle Wheel, recorded at King Studio in Tokyo on July 4 and 5, 1988).

Small-group records sat alongside the band work. In 1980 Audio Lab issued Impression, in which Takahashi's group shared the billing with the drummer Takeshi Inomata's, and in 1988 the two were reunited on Right Enough!, a GML disc by Special Quartet Plus 1 that pairs Takahashi and Konosuke Saijo on tenors over a rhythm section of Kotaro Tsukahara, Yoshinori Asami and Inomata. Recorded on January 16 to 18, 1986, the promotional album DHL Presents George Kawaguchi Super Big Band credits Takahashi as leader, tenor saxophonist, clarinetist and supervisor, with Tokyo Union listed as the band, George Kawaguchi on drums and as producer, Hidehiko Matsumoto on tenor saxophone and arrangements by Hiromasa Suzuki and Norio Maeda.

In November 1989, at the height of the band's popularity, Takahashi suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. Tokyo Union disbanded on December 31, 1989. After eight months of recovery he returned at a party on July 30, 1990, and went on to lead a septet. He recorded for the Aeolus label in the 1990s, including Secret Love (1992) and Senor Blues (1995), took up jazz education, and in 1996 founded a new ensemble, Jazz Groovys.

Tatsuya Takahashi passed away on February 29, 2008, of pancreatic cancer, at a hospital in Ota Ward, Tokyo. He was 76.

Takahashi's reputation rests on his role as a bandleader rather than as a solo voice. On Scandinavian Suite he is credited as leader and as the band's second tenor, and on Black Pearl he is credited on tenor saxophone, flute and clarinet. The band's identity came from how it dressed standards and originals. Maiden Voyage plays Hancock's modal title piece and Coltrane's "Giant Steps" against Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke" with an electric rhythm section, Scandinavian Suite is long-form writing for big band and synthesizer, and The Rock Seasons is a jazz-rock suite built from very short movements.

The rhythm section is the thread that links the jazz-funk and fusion albums. Got the Spirit, Maiden Voyage, The City and Black Pearl are all filed under the jazz-funk and fusion styles on Discogs, and the pianist Masahiro Kanayama appears on Scandinavian Suite, Maiden Voyage, The City and Black Pearl, with a changing cast of guitarists (Kenichi Araya, Masahiro Ikumi, Takao Naoi, Hidetoshi Kawano) beside him.

Takahashi did not stay in that groove. From the mid-1980s the Paddle Wheel albums turn to swing-era and bebop-era big-band repertoire: Basie-library pieces such as "Topsy", "Whirly Bird" and "Corner Pocket" on Keeping Count, and Miles Davis and Gil Evans material on Plays Miles & Gil. Tokyo Union also backed popular singers and television productions, so not everything issued under its name is jazz; the records above are the ones on which the band and its leader are the main act.