Toshiyuki Honda (本多俊之) is a Japanese saxophonist, flutist, composer and arranger, born in Tokyo on April 9, 1957. Jazz was the family business: his father, Toshio Honda, was a bassist, critic and broadcaster, and he wrote the liner notes for the 1980 album Mongolian Chant, a record on which his son appears as a guest. The younger Honda took up saxophone and flute largely on his own, played in his high school's jazz club, and went on to a degree in economics at Seikei University. He was still a student when his first album as a leader came out.

According to the reference biography on jazz.com, he joined the drummer George Otsuka's sextet in 1976 and formed his own group, Burning Wave, the following year. The debut, Burnin' Waves (Electric Bird, 1978), was made with the Los Angeles fusion group Seawind as his backing band: Larry Williams on keyboards, Gary Herbig on tenor saxophone, Jerry Hey on trumpet and flugelhorn, Bob Wilson on drums, with the Japanese keyboardist Chikara Ueda writing and conducting the arrangements. It is a jazz-funk record, and it made a 21-year-old saxophonist a name to watch. The same year he is credited on alto saxophone on bassist Red Mitchell's Scairport Blues, a Japan-only quintet date issued by Yupiteru. His own biography adds that he has since performed with Freddie Hubbard and Christopher Cross as well as Chick Corea.

The Electric Bird albums followed quickly. Opa! Com Deus (1979) used the Brazilian guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves, Easy Breathing (1980) brought in Los Angeles horn players, and Spanish Tears and Boomerang (both 1981) were credited to Honda and Burning Waves as a working band. He is the saxophonist on Kazumi Watanabe's Kylyn Live, recorded at Pit Inn in Roppongi on 15 to 17 June 1979 alongside Yasuaki Shimizu, trombonist Shigeharu Mukai and keyboardist Akiko Yano. He took the alto, soprano and flute chair in George Kawaguchi's African Hot Dance large-ensemble session of June 1980, and in April 1980 he was a billed guest on bassist Isao Suzuki's Mongolian Chant.

In 1982 he moved to Toshiba EMI's Eastworld label. Shangri-La was recorded that August and September in Hollywood and Tokyo with Ndugu Chancler, Neil Stubenhaus and Jerry Hey. Then came the record that made the strongest case for him as a straight jazz player: Dream (1984), with Chick Corea on piano and as co-producer, Miroslav Vitous on bass and Roy Haynes on drums, working through "Sophisticated Lady", "I Hear a Rhapsody" and "Alice in Wonderland". He guested on keyboardist Masaru Imada's Mint Breeze (1984), joined by Watanabe, and cut Saxophone Music (1985), a set built around his multitracked saxophones, with a string trio and Toshinori Kondo as guest trumpeter. In 1986 he led The Super Quartet with pianist Takehiro Honda, bassist Mitsuaki Furuno and drummer Motohiko Hino, and the same year recorded nightsongs, a laserdisc of Ellington and Strayhorn standards on which he is the only musician credited.

The screen work arrived in the middle of all this. He scored the films Ningyo Densetsu (1984) and Hitohira no Yuki (1985), then in 1987 wrote the music for Juzo Itami's A Taxing Woman (Marusa no Onna), which his official biography credits with the Japan Academy Prize for best music. He went on to score all but one of Itami's remaining films. His own band of the period, Toshiyuki Honda Radio Club, released records through Eastworld and Who Ring between 1987 and 1991, with the bassist Yoshihiro Naruse on Gadis: Marusa no Onna 2, and his theme "Good Evening" served as the opening theme of the nightly TV Asahi news programme News Station from 1989 to 1993. In 1989 he also scored Masato Harada's Gunhed.

The 1990s kept the two tracks running in parallel. Reed My Lips (1992) was cut with a Los Angeles team including drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, guitarist Michael Landau, tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb and trumpeter Jerry Hey. High Five (1997) was a saxophone-quintet album with the Trouvère Quartet, which includes Nobuya Sugawa, covering "Lush Life", "Oleo" and "Spain". He played on the duo Jimsaku's album 45℃ in 1991. Later film and television credits include Rintaro's animated feature Metropolis (2001), for which Honda also played saxophones and bass clarinet in a studio band, the cycling film Nasu: Summer in Andalusia (2003), the NHK morning drama Kaze no Haruka (2005), and the Fuji TV drama Shinjuku Yasen Byoin (2024).

His concert-hall work grew out of Sugawa's requests. The saxophone concerto Concerto du vent was commissioned by Sugawa and recorded by the BBC Philharmonic under Yutaka Sado for Chandos, released in 2008 alongside concertos by Takashi Yoshimatsu, Jacques Ibert and Lars-Erik Larsson. In 2009 Honda was the guest on drummer Shingo Okudaira's The Force: Live at Shinjuku Pit Inn, a quartet date with guitarist Sheryl Bailey and organist Brian Charette.

He is a visiting professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts, and his own site describes a run of "Jazz in Geidai" projects with the university's special wind orchestra, three albums in all, the third being FAREWELCOME, with guests including clarinettist Eiji Kitamura, drummer Takeo Moriyama and the Trouvère Quartet. The cover shows him blowing a saxophone on top of a Tyrannosaurus, which fits a man whose web handle and wind-band project are both called Dinosax. His 1978 debut and Boomerang (1981) have both been reissued by Steps Records with bonus tracks from a 2012 live album recorded at Shinjuku Pit Inn, and Holy Basil Records issued Burnin' Waves on vinyl in 2023.

He turns 70 in April 2027 and is still working the Tokyo jazz clubs. Shinjuku Pit Inn has him booked for three nights from 27 to 29 November 2026: a night with the Trouvère Quartet and piano, a night with the quintet Amazing Summit (guitarist Yoshiaki Masuo, pianist Kei Akagi, bassist Takashi Sugawa and drummer Masahiko Osaka), and a two-guitar session.

Honda came up in the 1970s fusion movement. Burnin' Waves, Easy Breathing and Spanish Tears are tight jazz-funk and fusion records, arranged for horn sections and rhythm players from both Tokyo and Los Angeles, and the Discogs style tags for his Electric Bird albums read Jazz-Funk and Fusion. His official biography singles out the beauty of his soprano sound, and he is credited on soprano on Shangri-La, September, Dream, Saxophone Music and The Super Quartet.

He does not stay in one lane. Dream is a quartet date with Corea, Vitous and Haynes that includes standards, nightsongs is a solo overdub through the Ellington book, and High Five is saxophone-quintet repertoire from "Oleo" to a nine-minute suite of his own film themes. Composition runs alongside the playing: the Itami scores, the Metropolis period-jazz soundtrack and the concerto for saxophone and orchestra are all written by the same person who leads the Pit Inn quintet.

His own site describes 1-2-3 For Steps And More, an alto saxophone and marimba duo commissioned by Sugawa and first played with percussionist Takafumi Fujimoto at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, as a tribute to John Coltrane. By his program note, it opens from "Giant Steps", moves through a "multitonic system" and ends by returning to it. That is a reasonable summary of where his writing goes now: jazz harmony that started in a fusion band, pushed through classical commissions.