Toshiaki Yokota (横田年昭) is a Tokyo-born flutist whose name sits at the center of Japan's early-1970s jazz-rock moment. He was born in Tokyo in 1944, and Discogs describes him as the lead flutist of drummer Takeshi Inomata's brass-heavy Sound Limited, as well as the leader of his own group, The Beat Generation (ビート・ジェネレーション). Both halves of that description show up on disc in the same year, 1970.

Sound Limited came first. Inomata's band, formed at the turn of the decade, recorded its debut Sounds of Sound L.T.D. for Columbia over three days, March 25 to 27, 1970, at Tokyo Studio Centre, with Ryo Kawasaki and Shigenori Kamiya on electric guitars, Shunzo Ohno and Takashi Kumagai on trumpets, Takao Uematsu on tenor saxophone, Yusuke Hoguchi on organ and Yokota on flute. The band went on to the Express label's Sound Ltd. (1970), on which he is credited on flute and recorder, and to New Rock in Europe: Sound Ltd. 2 (1971), where he doubles alto and bass flute. On Innocent Canon (King, recorded February 21, 1971) he plays bass, alto and block flutes and piccolo. He is also one of the flutists on Inomata's Jazz Rock in Stravinsky (Liberty, 1970).

His own records followed in a rush. Exciting Flute (Express EP-7766) was recorded on May 17 and June 3, 1970, and is a program of rock and pop material of the day, among them "Let It Be," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Born to Be Wild" and "Spinning Wheel," played by a jazz big-band-sized group. Its arrangements are credited to Hideo Ichikawa, Norio Maeda and Yokota himself, and the band includes Takeshi Inomata and Sadakazu Tabata on drums, Masaru Imada and Ichikawa on piano, Sadanori Nakamure on guitar and Tadayuki Harada on baritone saxophone. Élévation (高翔, Express EP-8009), billed to Yokota and The Beat Generation, treated "Easy to Be Hard," "And When I Die" and "What'd I Say" in the same spirit, with arrangements by Masahiko Satoh, Inomata on drums and Nakamure on guitar. An undated Toshiba LP, Young Flute, reuses much of the Exciting Flute repertoire, with Yukio Eto as a second flutist alongside the Pop Philharmonic.

The record he is remembered for is Flute Adventure: Le Soleil Etait Encore Chaud (太陽はまだ暑く燃えていた…), issued in 1970 on London Records (SKK(L)3005) as Toshiaki Yokota and The Beat Generation. A side-long suite on the first side is followed by a Brazilian second side built around "Orfeu Negro" and "Samba de Orfeu," and the sleeve carries liner notes by Norio Awazu (粟津則雄). Yokota plays Indian flute, alto flute and bass flute, with Nakamure and Kimio Mizutani on guitars, Hideo Ichikawa on piano, Masaoki Terakawa and Kinio Sato on bass, Antonio Ishida on drums and a percussion group of Eiji Narushima, Larry Sunaga and Pedro Umemura. Record Collector's Paul Bowler, reviewing the Parisian label Superfly's 2015 limited vinyl reissue (SRLP 020), wrote that it had gathered a cult reputation and described Yokota's flute as soaring and birdlike. A guest selector on the Superfly Records blog called him one of the best flutists of the Japanese jazz-rock era.

In 1971 he turned up in three more settings. He is the flutist on Primitive Community (原始共同体, Toshiba TP-8066), a percussion-heavy session with six percussionists, Shunzo Ohno on trumpet, Kimio Mizutani on guitar and Chito Kawachi on drums, a record YouTube uploaders bill as Toshiaki Yokota and Primitive Community. He plays flute and soprano saxophone on the psychedelic rock album Love Will Make a Better You by Love Live Life + One (King), and he continued with Sound Limited. In 1977 he was one of the instrumentalists paired with Inomata, one at a time, for the duet album The Dialogue (Audio Lab), recorded at Iino Hall on November 28 and 29.

The late 1970s and 1980s widen the picture. He composed and performed on SF Discorama: Death in the Cosmos (Victor, 1978), a science-fiction audio drama directed by the novelist Sakyo Komatsu, and he wrote and arranged the soundtrack album Iga Nimpoh-Cho (Epic, 1982), on which Ryudo Uzaki sings. For Asian Mirage (Eastworld, 1983), made as the duo East Pulse with the multi-instrumentalist Chito Kawachi, he composed and arranged music around Asian instruments; a Fond/Sound write-up quotes his composer's notes as saying he played thirteen different flutes on it. He also guested on other people's records, among them Jun Hatano's And Now (CBS/Sony, 1979), Shoukichi Kina and Champloose's Blood Line (1980, credited on angklung and woodwind), Mio Takaki's Nada (1982), the Denon folk album Taiko (1983) and Takashi Sato's Nuit du Samedi et Matin du Dimanche (1985).

A concert on November 5, 1988 at Tessenkai in Omotesando, Tokyo, documented on video, shows him in a quieter register: a program of earthen flutes and bamboo instruments with Chito Kawachi and Yujin Harada on percussion. His name also appears on a pair of 1969 Victor releases from the kayokyoku world, one of them an EP built around the theme of the TBS television drama Sign wa V (サインはV); they belong to a different side of the Tokyo studio scene than the jazz records that make up the bulk of his discography.

Yokota's central move was to take the flute, an instrument that jazz-rock bands of the period mostly used as a color, and make it the lead voice over a fully electric rhythm section. On Exciting Flute and Élévation he does that through the pop and rock repertoire of 1970, carried by big-band-scale writing from Maeda, Satoh and Ichikawa. On Flute Adventure he drops the covers for his own long-form writing.

Record Collector's account of Flute Adventure lists garage-rock guitar, Latin percussion, tabla, tribal voices, free jazz and Brazilian music among its ingredients, with "Cimmerie" described as Japanese acid folk and "Bal de Pendus" as having a free-jazz punch. The first-side suite is said to take its inspiration from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud. A Fond/Sound review of Asian Mirage describes him as an artist who began as a quasi-spiritual jazz player and then moved toward Asian instruments, a path that matches the 1971 Primitive Community percussion session and the 1988 earthen-flute concert.

His instrument list is wide for a jazz flutist: Indian flute, alto and bass flutes, piccolo, recorder, soprano saxophone on one 1971 album and, on Blood Line, angklung.