Yoriyuki Harada (原田依幸, Harada Yoriyuki in Japanese order) is a Tokyo free-jazz pianist who also plays bass clarinet, clarinet and percussion. He was born in 1948 in Shimane Prefecture, on the Sea of Japan coast of western Japan, and went to Tokyo as a student at the Kunitachi College of Music in the western suburbs. He trained there as a clarinettist; one jazz archive describes him as self-taught on the piano, which became his main instrument. He was already playing bass in professional jazz groups and organising campus concerts when he met the saxophonist and clarinettist Kazutoki Umezu in the college's clarinet department.

The two began improvising as a duo, Umezu on clarinet and bass clarinet and Harada on piano, working with graphic scores and prepared piano. They added a high-school drummer, Tetsuya Morimura, and called the trio Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai, "Lifestyle Improvement Committee", a half-joking borrowing of the committee language of the student radicals of the day. The band came apart around 1973. In 1974 Harada formed a trio of his own and played jazz coffeehouses across Japan.

Umezu went to New York in September 1974 and settled into the Lower East Side loft scene, then invited Harada over. Harada arrived in July 1975. On 20 July 1975 they played a concert at Sunrise Studios, a loft on Second Avenue with a grand piano, with the trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, the bassist William Parker and the drummer Rashid Sinan. On 11 August 1975 the same five recorded at Studio We, mostly in single takes by Umezu's recollection. The album was issued by the band itself, credited to a "New York branch" of Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai (生活向上委員会ニューヨーク支部), with Harada on piano and bass clarinet and the side-long "Stravizauls" credited to him as composer. The Belgian label Aguirre reissued it in 2022.

Back in Japan in 1976 he played in more than one band. He is on a tape of the drummer Sabu Toyozumi's unit made at the Franco-Japanese Hall on 21 May 1976, with Umezu and the reed players Hiroaki Katayama and Masami Nakagawa, which was released only in 2021 as Cosmos Has Spirit / Phase One. He also played in Umezu's free-jazz band 集団疎開 (Shudan Sokai), whose one album, Sono Zenya, was taped live at the club Alone in Hachioji on 24 December 1976. From there the Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai name grew into a full orchestra that became known around Japan for its humorous stage appearances. Harada conducted and played piano on its major-label debut This Is Music Is This!? (Union Records, 1980), which moves between originals and "Take the A Train", and on Dance Dance Dance (Union Records, 1981), where he is credited with piano, electric piano, organ, Mini Moog, soprano saxophone, clarinet and voice. Two of his own pieces, "Wanaoki" and "Hentai Nanabyoshi", are on that second record, and both reappear on his own album recorded the following year.

On 18 October 1980 the Donaueschingen Musiktage in Germany recorded a concert by Masahiko Togashi, Masahiko Satoh and the shakuhachi player Hozan Yamamoto, issued as Three Masters (Next Wave). On the closing piece, Satoh's "Midare", Harada is the pianist, next to Umezu, the trombonist Shigeharu Mukai and the drummer Shota Koyama. The Umezu-Harada Duo's own Danke came out on the same label in 1981, with the German critic and producer Joachim Ernst Berendt, who is also credited on Three Masters, as producer.

His first album under his own name was Miu, recorded at Nippon Columbia's studios between 20 August and 6 October 1981 and released by Better Days. Harada plays piano, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone and ocarina and leads a group that includes the vibraphonist Hiroshi Hatsuyama, the drummers Ryojiro Furusawa, Tony Koba and Toyozumi, the bassists Tetsu Yamauchi and Hideaki Mochizuki and the cellist Keiki Midorikawa. It includes a version of Sun Ra's "There'll Be Comeback" and is available on streaming services through Nippon Columbia. The same year he recorded Flame Up with Togashi and Umezu (King Records, taped in May 1981, released 1982), and he played bass clarinet in Akira Sakata's large band on 4 O'Clock, then in the Haniwa All Stars of Kiyohiko Senba (CBS/Sony, 1983) and on Sakata's Ellington programme DA-DA-DA (1985).

Two 1983 sessions were released much later: a night at Shinjuku Pit Inn on 28 March with a string ensemble billed as the Mondrian Areopagitica String Quartet, issued by Off Note in 2015 as 1983, and improvised sets with the flautist Jim Denley at the clubs Aketa and Goodman in Ogikubo on 31 July and 1 August, put out as the cassette Tokyo 1983. A 1985 recording made in Tokyo, on which only Harada is credited, was not released until 2000, as Kaibutsu. On 16 September 1988 he led his Unit at Shinjuku Pit Inn with the American drummer Andrew Cyrille as guest, a single 59-minute performance released by Aketa's Disk as Ehyang in 1989. Aketa no Mise, the Nishi-Ogikubo club that Shoji Aketagawa opened in 1974 and the home of that label, is where he still plays regularly.

Off Note took up his work in the middle of the 1990s. Harada Isu (原田椅子, 1996) is a two-disc set of his quartet, with the saxophonist Hideo Tokioka, the bassist Hideaki Mochizuki and the drummer Shota Koyama, taped at Shinjuku Pit Inn in November and December 1995, plus one 1983 track with Takeo Moriyama on drums. Sixth Murder (1997) is a duo with the bassist Isao Suzuki, recorded at Aketa no Mise on 31 December 1995; the two worked together again on Zun-Bararin (2010) and, with the cellist Tristan Honsinger, Dokoku (2010). He recorded Mu-Myo with Koichi Matsukaze at the Mitaka Arts Center on 12 March 2003, and a duo with Honsinger, Margin, in Ogikubo in October 2006.

Korea is the other half of his later career. Homura (Off Note, 2007) was recorded in Seoul in March 2007 with the trumpeter Choi Sun Bae and the saxophonist and clarinettist Alfred Harth, and comes with a DVD of the sessions. Two concerts he gave at Chang Soo Park's house in Seoul, on 14 August 2003 and 20 May 2005, were issued on streaming services as volumes 48 and 49 of The House Concert Live Collection in December 2025. In Russia he recorded with the saxophonist Sergey Letov in Moscow on 13 September 2012 and in Protvino on 14 September 2012, released as Live in 2021.

The late 2010s brought a run of records in the line of Cecil Taylor. Tokyo Banka (Off Note, 2018) is a duo with the tenor saxophonist Naohiro Kawashita, recorded at Sound & Bar Howl in Tokyo on 26 September 2017. Taylor passed away in April 2018, and in the same year Harada and the nohkan flautist Yukihiro Isso released two Tohyohyo Music albums both subtitled as tributes to him: Mono Gurui, a two-disc trio with the drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, and Yugen Jikko, with the sho player Ko Ishikawa and the percussionist Takinojo Mochizuki.

He is still working. A jazz-archive listing for 2025 and 2026 shows Harada leading a regular quartet at Aketa no Mise, with the bassist Hideaki Mochizuki, the drummer 石塚俊明 (Toshiaki Ishizuka) and a tenor saxophonist (Hideo Tokioka through early 2025, then 鈴木放屁), alongside a long run of duo evenings at Nutteru House in Kappabashi with partners including the guitarist 石渡明廣 (Akihiro Ishiwatari), the saxophonists Eiichi Hayashi, Masayo Koketsu and Ryuichi Yoshida, and the drummer Shoji Hano, listed for 8 March 2025. On 23 August 2026 he played Shinjuku Pit Inn in a trio billed as Seo, Harada and Toyozumi, and dates at Aketa no Mise and Nutteru House are listed into late October 2026.

Harada plays free jazz at the piano in the manner associated with Cecil Taylor: heavy rhythmic figures in the bass register, very fast runs across the keyboard and long, building improvisations. The Tobira Records and Aguirre notes on the 1975 New York record single out the speed and force of his playing at the Sunrise Studios concert, and the tribute titles of his 2018 albums name Taylor outright. A track on the 1976 Shudan Sokai album, "Sechi no Barado", is rendered by a Discogs contributor as "Ballad of Cecil".

He is not only a free-jazz pianist. The Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai years show an appetite for theatre and comedy, with a repertoire of originals and standards such as "Take the A Train", "A Night in Tunisia" and "St. Thomas", and Harada contributing synthesizer and organ as well as piano. Miu adds a Sun Ra tune and fusion textures, with electric bass and vibraphone. He is also credited with the calligraphy on Dokoku and the title lettering on Kaibutsu.

His partners across the years are mostly horn players and percussionists from Tokyo's improvising circle, plus visiting players from Europe, Korea and the United States, so the discography reads as a long list of duos: Umezu, Isao Suzuki, Honsinger, Matsukaze, Kawashita, Letov, Yoshida and Cyrille.