Yuji Imamura (今村祐司) is a Tokyo-born percussionist, a conga player above all, whose name runs through Japanese jazz and fusion credits from 1968 to 2021 at least. He was born on March 30, 1939, and according to his CDJournal profile began performing while still in high school. Discogs files 62 entries under his name, and only a few of them are his own records. Shinjuku Pit Inn, where he still leads a group, introduces him as a pioneer of Japanese percussion who drives a band with lively Latin rhythms and warm, human playing. He turned 87 in March 2026.

Little has been written about his early life. His own homepage, the CDJournal profile and a Japanese drummers' directory give his birth date and birthplace and a short outline of his career; where he studied and who taught him are not recorded in any of them.

The earliest credit found is on Sadao Watanabe's Sadao Plays Bacharach and Beatles, recorded in November and December 1968 and issued in 1969, where he plays percussion in a band that includes Terumasa Hino on trumpet, Hiroshi Suzuki on trombone and Yoshiaki Masuo on guitar. His homepage says he spent ten years performing with the Latin pianist Naoya Matsuoka and made records and gave concerts with Watanabe after Watanabe came back from America. On record, Watanabe's Open Road (CBS/Sony, recorded on May 2, 1973 at Hibiya Public Hall) credits him on congas and percussion in a band with strings and with Takehiro Honda on piano, Hiroshi Fukumura on trombone, Kohsuke Mine on saxophones, Shunzo Ohno on trumpet and Yoshio Suzuki on bass. The one Matsuoka record in his Discogs credits is Majorca (Warner Bros., 1979), on which he plays percussion and, on "Que Pasa Amigo", congas; Japanese Wikipedia also lists him among the guests in Matsuoka's band Wesing.

His longest documented association is with Terumasa Hino. His homepage says he joined Hino's group for recordings, concerts and the Montreux Jazz Festival. The earliest Hino record on which he is credited is A Part (Canyon, 1971), recorded in November and December 1970 with Reggie Workman on bass, Takao Uematsu on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, Kiyoshi Sugimoto on guitar, Hideo Ichikawa on piano and Motohiko Hino on drums, with Imamura on congas. On August 14, 1972 he played percussion on Reminicent Suite, Hino's date with the pianist Mal Waldron at Victor Studio in Tokyo, with Uematsu, the bassist Isao Suzuki and Motohiko Hino.

In 1973 he was the conga player in Hino's working quintet, with the pianist Mikio Masuda, the bassist Yoshio Ikeda and Motohiko Hino on drums. That group recorded Live! for Three Blind Mice on June 2, 1973, played the 1973 International New Jazz Meeting at Burg Altena in West Germany (the eight-disc box set issued in 2016 holds its "Akubai" and "Rock for Altena", 20 and 43 minutes long), and on June 29 was recorded live at the Jazzclub Domicile in Munich for Enja, released as Taro's Mood. He is credited on congas for "Ode to Workman" on Hino's Into Eternity (CBS/Sony, recorded May 30, 1974) and on percussion for "Hi-nology" on Speak to Loneliness (East Wind, recorded January 15, 1975). Two live recordings from April 1975 close the period: Nemuro on April 8, issued as the two volumes of Wheel Stone - Live in Nemuro, and Yubin Chokin Hall in Tokyo on April 14, issued as Live in Concert and described by Universal Music Japan as the farewell concert Hino gave just before leaving for the United States. Watanabe sat in on alto saxophone and Masahiko Togashi played percussion beside Imamura, with Fumio Itabashi on electric piano, Akira Okazawa on electric bass, Tsutomu Okada on bass and Shigeharu Mukai on trombone.

His homepage says that after Hino left for America he joined the group of Hino's younger brother, the drummer Motohiko Hino. Flying Clouds, the set the Motohiko Hino Quartet + 2 recorded at "5 Days in Jazz 1976" in Yamaha Hall, Tokyo, on May 27, 1976 and released in 2022, credits Imamura on percussion alongside Nobuyoshi Ino on bass, Kazumi Watanabe on guitar and the tenor saxophonists Mabumi Yamaguchi and Yasuaki Shimizu.

He had already appeared as a leader in 1975. NHK's transcription series for broadcasters, programme 137, Modern Jazz in Japan, carries three tracks billed to the Yuji Imamura Quintet ("Never Change for Me", "Like a Stone" and "Self-Contradiction"), with Hidefumi Toki on alto and soprano saxophones, Itabashi on piano, Yoshio Ikeda on bass, Shoji Nakayama on drums and Imamura on congas.

From 1975 he is a regular in the Three Blind Mice catalogue and its circle. He plays percussion on Mukai's first leader album, For My Little Bird (Columbia, recorded in November 1974), and was one of the two added players, with Kazumi Watanabe, on Masaru Imada's Green Caterpillar (recorded January 20 and 22, 1975 at Aoi Studio, with Isoo Fukui on bass and Tetsujiro Obara on drums). He played congas and percussion in the New Herd of Toshiyuki Miyama on Shuko Mizuno's Jazz Orchestra '75 (September 3, 1975) and was a guest on congas on The World of Shuko Mizuno (1976).

Air, recorded on April 12 and 20, 1977 at Epicurus Studio in Tokyo and issued as Three Blind Mice TBM-3006, is the record that carries his name. It is two side-long pieces, "Air Part I" (19:30) and "Air Part II" (18:10), played by a quintet that Discogs lists as Imamura (congas, amplified tabla, percussion), Ino (electric bass through an echo chamber, pedal and flanger, double bass, Turkish guitar, tape recorder), the drummer Hiroshi Murakami, the guitarist Renkichi Hayashi (electric guitar with ring modulator and effects, kalimba, an Indian single-string guitar) and Yasuo Shimura (flute, amplified soprano saxophone, sho, voice, ARP synthesizer, radio). Takeshi Fujii produced, Yoshihiko Kannari engineered and Yozo Iwanami wrote the liner notes. Disk Union describes it as an intellectual, dense electric jazz-rock album recalling Miles Davis, and the Fukuoka dealer Hip Tank Records says it was made just before Imamura began performing live with his own combo. It was reissued on CD by Three Blind Mice in 2001, by Think! Records in 2013 and by Craftman Records in 2020.

The same studios kept him busy that year and the next. He played percussion on Scandinavian Suite (recorded May 15 and 22, 1977), Bingo Miki's suite for the Tokyo Union big band of Tatsuya Takahashi, which also features the guitarist Takao Naoi. He is on the three Tee & Company albums, Sonnet, Dragon Garden and Spanish Flower (recorded in November and December 1977 at Aoi Studio, with Imada, Ino, the bassist Hideto Kanai, Murakami, Masayuki Takayanagi on electric guitar, Uematsu and the reed player Kenji Mori), where he also plays tabla. On Imada's Planets (recorded March 17, 1977) he is credited on "Sea's Pasture", and in Imada's quartet he is on No Tears with the singer Ayako Hosokawa (recorded December 27 and 28, 1977) and Remember of Love (February 18, 1978). He also played on She Cries (recorded November 22 to 24, 1978), the album of the singer Shigeko Toya and Imada, with the drummer Akira Ishikawa and the bassist Masaoki Terakawa.

He stayed with Imada into the 1980s at the Full House label. Andalusian Breeze (recorded September 3 and 4, 1980) has the drummer Shinji Mori and guitarist Kazumi Watanabe, and Carnival (recorded May to July 1981 at Sound Inn, Tokyo) has Michael Brecker on tenor saxophone and Randy Brecker on flugelhorn. He is also on Fukumura's Nice Day (recorded May and June 1980), Seiichi Nakamura's 1982 album 取りみだしの美学, Michiko Yoshino's One Love (1984), and, on congas as a guest, the band Carioca's Virgin Islands (1986). CDJournal adds that in the 1980s he co-led a group with the saxophonist Tomoki Takahashi (高橋知己) and worked in a group led by Honda; Imamura's homepage also says he worked in Imada's and Honda's groups after Motohiko Hino's group broke up. The record that documents Honda's side is earlier: Imamura plays congas on What's Going On by T. Honda & His Orchestra (Trio Records, recorded 1973).

In 1983 Riv.Star issued Youjin Rainbow (25RL-0004), billed to Youjin Rainbow. CDJournal lists Eugene Rainbow (ユージン・レインボー) among his leader works, and a dealer describes the record as a one-off project led by "Youjin", meaning Imamura, recorded in Hawaii with a Latin flavour. The sleeve lists nine tracks, among them "Pineapple Walking" and "熱い砂".

Later leader records include Mario (マリオ), which Oricon dates to July 19, 1997 and JazzNode places on Aketa's Disk, with tracks including "Jump Monk Jump" and "泣いて笑って". Beat From the Earth (What'sNew Records WNCJ-2177, released April 25, 2007) is a duo with the saxophonist Teruo Goto (後藤輝夫): ten tracks, standards such as "A Night in Tunisia", "Poinciana" and "What a Difference a Day Made" beside originals, with Imamura on congas, kalimba and djembe. He is on two Tomoki Takahashi Quartet CDs on Aketa's Disk, Smile Please (2013) and Wise One (2017, with the singer Noriko Suzuki), and on the bassist Michio Takanashi's self-released If I Could Go Back (recorded April 2021), his most recent new recording on Discogs.

His own group has been his main vehicle in recent years. His blog's monthly schedules for 2016 and 2017 list dates at Shinjuku Pit Inn and Aketa's in Nishi-Ogikubo with the saxophonist Koichi Matsukaze, the pianist Takeshi Shibuya (渋谷毅), the bassist Katsumasa Kamimura and the drummer Fumio Watanabe, and filmed sets from 2015 to 2017 name the same group. In 2026 the group, now with the saxophonist Kenta Tsugami, the pianist Nobara Kodachi (小太刀のばら), Kamimura and the drummer Akira Toyama (外山明), is on Shinjuku Pit Inn's calendar, with a date listed for November 25, 2026.

He also teaches. Japanese Wikipedia's list of instructors at Mesar House (メーザー・ハウス), a music school in Meguro, Tokyo that opened in 1983 and closed on March 31, 2020, names him as a percussion instructor, and the flautist and percussionist Toshiji Yamamoto (born 1954) is described there as having studied percussion under Imamura and Motohiko Hino. His playing keeps surfacing on collectors' compilations of Japanese jazz, among them the Shibuya Jazz Classics volumes (2003 and 2005), Spiritual Jazz 8 (2018), BBE's J Jazz series (2018 and 2021) and Scenery of Japanese Jazz (2020).

No interview in which he names his influences was found, so this section sticks to what the records and descriptions show.

Congas are his main instrument, and the credits add tabla (on Air, on "A Tree Frog" from Spanish Flower and on Dragon Garden), kalimba and djembe (on Beat From the Earth) and general percussion. Shinjuku Pit Inn's own description of him stresses lively Latin rhythms, and his homepage names the Latin pianist Naoya Matsuoka as his partner of ten years, which fits the Latin flavour that a record dealer finds in Youjin Rainbow.

The settings are wider than that. He is the conga player in Hino's quintet of the early 1970s, the percussion colour in Imada's piano-led fusion records, a guest in a big band, and the leader of Air, which Discogs files as jazz-rock and fusion and which Disk Union compares to electric Miles Davis and Hip Tank Records says has a Japanese flavour, built from long improvised pieces. Beat From the Earth turns to standards and short originals for a conga and saxophone duo.