Yoshitaka Akimitsu (秋満義孝, Akimitsu Yoshitaka in Japanese order) was a Tokyo pianist who spent seventy-odd years in the swing end of Japanese jazz. He was born in Tokyo on 19 August 1929, left the piano course at the Musashino Academy of Music without graduating, and began working as a pianist in 1947. In 1948 he joined Shin Matsumoto's Ichiban Octet, a popular combo of the day, and in 1953 he was one of the founding members of clarinetist Shoji Suzuki's Rhythm Aces, alongside Saburo Nanbu and Tetsuo Asahara. According to the Japan Jazz Music Association's own biography of him, he and the drummer Isamu Harada, who joined later, built the group's golden age. In 1957 he formed the Yoshitaka Akimitsu Quintet. The association's biography notes that he was called "Japan's Teddy Wilson", and the nickname stayed with him for the rest of his career.

His earliest records on Discogs are from 1957 and 1958. He is the pianist on a King Records EP, Midnight in Tokyo, Part 4 (1957), and on Swing (King, 1958), taped on 11 and 12 November 1957 by the Swing All Stars with the saxophonists Akitoshi Igarashi and Akira Miyazawa. German Wikipedia adds that he was in the Swing Journal critics' poll group of 1958, and King's LP of the poll winners puts him at the piano on side A, with Eiji Kitamura on clarinet, Muneyoshi Nishiyo on cornet, Seiji Hiraoka on vibraphone, Tsuneo Yoshiba on bass and Jimmy Takeuchi on drums. The same year he played on the vocal LP Tokyo Canaries beside Kitamura and Igarashi.

Through 1959 and 1960 Teichiku Records was recording his own quintet. Discogs credits Saburo Nanbu on vibraphone, a clarinetist and a drummer listed under their kanji names (吉村昇 and 秋山健三), and Yuji Watanabe on bass. The records include a 10-inch LP, The Fascinating Combo (Teichiku NL-1125), a seasonal LP, Christmas Dance Party (NL-1144), and a 1960 single pairing the film themes "Plein Soleil" and "Orfeu Negro". He also made Modern Jazz Basket (Jupiter) with a clarinetist, vibraphonist, bass and drums, and played Hammond organ on Kazuo Yashiro's trio LP Keys of Love (1959). With Shoji Suzuki's All Stars he is the pianist on three tracks of Diamond Parade (1959) and the arranger of "Dark Eyes" (Kuroi Hitomi).

The Rhythm Aces remained a home base. In 1971 he is among the pianists on the Rhythm Aces' double LP All Night Swing (Express), a big session whose credits include Hidehiko Matsumoto on tenor, Fumio Nanri on trumpet, Masanaga Harada on bass and the singer Martha Miyake. In 1977 he is one of two pianists in the King Records big-band date Dream, billed to the Jazz All Stars, with Takeshi Inomata on drums, Sadanori Nakamure on guitar and Konosuke Saijo and Miyazawa among the tenor players. The association's biography adds that his partnership with the singer Peggy Hayama lasted until her death in 2017.

From the 1970s the clarinetist Eiji Kitamura was his most frequent bandleader. Discogs lists him on My Monday Date (Victor, 1976) by Kitamura's Hello Jazz Band, on the direct-to-disc 30 Years in 30 Minutes (Toshiba, 1977), where he takes the second side while Akira Kumasaka plays the first, and on a run of Kitamura albums through the 1980s, among them the Columbia LP Memories of You (1981), on which he is billed alongside Kitamura, the singer Dolley Baker, Hiroshi Sunaga and Satoru Oda, and A Day in Jazz Vol. 1 (1982). In 1976 he was the pianist on Tib Kamayatsu's only album under his own name, Sing a Simple Melody, with Kitamura on clarinet.

His own name started appearing on sleeves in the late 1970s. Vivre Pour Vivre (Toshiba, 1978) is a trio record of film themes with Osamu Kawakami on bass and Takeuchi on drums, and Something to Remember You By (Audio Lab, recorded 13 April 1979) is a standards trio with the bassist Ikuo Ikezawa and the drummer Hiroshi Sunaga. My Melancholy Baby (Toshiba, 1980) followed, again with Takeuchi and the bassist Tsuneo Shibata.

The record that sums up the "Teddy Wilson" label is Hello Teddy. In December 1982 Toshiba-EMI's No. 1 Studio in Tokyo was set up for a digital recording on which Akimitsu and Teddy Wilson shared two pianos, with Kitamura on clarinet, Koji Toyama on bass and Tsuyoshi Watanabe on drums. Released by Eastworld in 1983 as Akimitsu's album, it is twelve standards, among them "Oh, Lady Be Good", "Stompin' at the Savoy", "Memories of You" and "Bye Bye Blues". In 1988 he made Swing Time (GML), a sextet date co-led with Igarashi at Pioneer Studio in Meguro, with Ichiro Masuda on vibraphone.

He was also the music supervisor of the Kobe Jazz Street festival from its first edition. Speaking to the festival's own site around its 31st edition, he said he had kept the programme to Dixieland and swing and away from modern jazz, with 45-minute stages improvised without rehearsal, the leader calling tunes after a word with the players and the rhythm section holding it together. He said he played "Suzukake no Michi", Shoji Suzuki's signature piece, at that year's festival.

His last leader album on Discogs is Melodies in My Mind (Marshmallow Export, 2010), recorded on 8 April 2010 at the Sugita Theatre in Yokohama with the alto saxophonist Hiromi Masuda, the bassist Takao Neichi and the drummer Kazunori Kondo, when he was eighty. In 2003 he made The Eternal Scene (Audio Park) with the electone player Ai Nishina, a duo album built on film music. In 2017 the Japan Jazz Music Association gave him its Jazz Grand Prize, the same year as Igarashi, Inomata, Yasuko Agawa and Makoto Ozone. He kept playing after ninety, and a video of a birthday concert on 19 August 2024, his 95th birthday, shows him at the piano with three saxophonists, a bassist and a drummer.

Yoshitaka Akimitsu passed away at his home in Tokyo at about five in the morning on 16 April 2026, at the age of 96. The Kyodo News report carried by the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun on 10 June 2026 gives the cause as ischemic heart disease and says the funeral was held privately by relatives. The official website of the saxophonist Akitoshi Igarashi, with whom he made Swing Time, carries its own notice of his passing, giving the date as 16 April 2026 and his age as 96.

Akimitsu was a swing pianist, and the Teddy Wilson comparison was made about him in his own country for most of his career. The evidence is in the repertoire. Hello Teddy, Swing Time and the Kitamura dates are built from the Goodman-era songbook of "Oh, Lady Be Good", "Memories of You", "Stardust" and "Take the 'A' Train", and the Kobe Jazz Street rule he described, Dixieland through swing, with music that is pleasant to listen to rather than theoretical, reads as a summary of his own taste.

He also made a good deal of music that sits next to jazz rather than inside it. This Is Piano Mood (Columbia, 1968) is an instrumental album of film and pop themes with the piano in the lead, and Discogs files Vivre Pour Vivre under pop and soundtrack as well as jazz. He was also a singers' pianist, Peggy Hayama chief among them, and Discogs lists him on popular-song sessions with singers such as Frank Nagai. The core of his catalogue is still swing and mainstream jazz, which is what Swing Journal, the Rhythm Aces' records and the association's 2017 award are about.