Tetsuo Sakurai, born in Tokyo on November 13, 1957, started playing bass at thirteen and co-founded Casiopea with guitarist Issei Noro in the band's earliest lineup. In 1983, a trip to Brazil permanently reshaped his playing: he discovered samba and Brazilian rhythm, an influence that runs through his later Casiopea work, the Shambara side project he formed with drummer Akira Jimbo, and on into his post-Casiopea career.

In 1990, when Noro demanded Shambara be dissolved, Sakurai and Jimbo refused and left Casiopea instead, forming the duo Jimsaku. Jimsaku disbanded in 1998; unlike Jimbo, who eventually rejoined Casiopea, Sakurai never returned to the band.

His Brazilian influence never faded. His fifth solo album, Cartas do Brasil (2003), is a self-cover vocal record recorded in Rio de Janeiro with a serious roster of Brazilian musicians — Djavan, Ivan Lins, Rosa Passos, Filo Machado, and others — the work of someone who'd spent two decades genuinely inside that tradition rather than sampling it from a distance.

Alongside his solo and Casiopea/Jimsaku work, Sakurai built an extensive international career as a session and collaborating bassist: Discogs's own profile for him names the Brecker Brothers, Bob James, guitarist Lee Ritenour, drummer Harvey Mason, Vinnie Colaiuta, Dennis Chambers, and drummer Senri Kawaguchi among his collaborators, with Chambers appearing directly on his own Gentle Hearts Tour 2004 and Vital World (2010). He has also led a Jaco Pastorius tribute project. He now plays with Jimbo and former Casiopea keyboardist Minoru Mukaiya in the Katsushika Trio, revisiting 1980s Casiopea material.

Sakurai's playing is defined by its genuine, sustained Brazilian influence, traced directly to a 1983 trip that reshaped his approach for the rest of his career — a real point of stylistic difference from the more straight-fusion-oriented playing of many of his Japanese fusion contemporaries.