Yutaka Yokokura (横倉裕, Yokokura Yutaka) is a Tokyo-born pianist, keyboardist, koto player, arranger, composer and producer who made his career in Los Angeles and recorded for GRP Records under the single name Yutaka. He was born in Setagaya, Tokyo. English and Japanese Wikipedia and Wikidata give the date as 26 June 1956; at least one Japanese music writer gives the same day in 1952.

His first band came out of Seikei High School. The Mothers Worry (ザ・マザーズ・ウォーリー) played bossa nova, and in 1970 it won the folk division of the 4th All Japan Light Music Contest, the Yamaha-run amateur competition, with an English-language song called "Just After The Rain." The group became Novo, with Yokokura on keyboards and vocals. Its single "愛を育てる" (with "You Are The Sea" on the other side) came out on the London label in January 1973, with Yokokura credited on Discogs as producer and arranger, and Novo disbanded after two singles.

He then left for California. Sources give the year as 1972 or 1973; he enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, drawn to Brazilian music and above all to the sound of Sergio Mendes. Japanese sources describe Dave Grusin as one of his teachers, and Grusin and Larry Rosen, the partners behind GRP, produced his debut. His first songwriting credits on other artists' records followed: two compositions, "Very Special Moment" and "Just Another Love Song," on Kimiko Kasai's Tokyo Special (CBS/Sony, 1977), and "Very Special Moment" again on her Love Connection (1982).

Love Light (Alfa, 1978) was his first record under his own name. Alfa released it in Japan on 25 September 1978, after sessions at Rusk Sound Studios in Hollywood and Electric Lady Studios in New York. Grusin and Rosen produced it, and Yokokura played Fender Rhodes, Oberheim synthesizer and acoustic piano, sang on two tracks, and shared the arranging credit with Grusin. The rhythm sections were American, with Steve Gadd and Steve Schaeffer on drums, Abraham Laboriel and Ken Wild on bass and Eddie Daniels on tenor saxophone, and the Japanese instruments came from Osamu Kitajima (koto, biwa, guitar), Kazu Matsui (shakuhachi) and June Kuramoto (koto). Patti Austin sang the title song. Three years later Alfa's American arm issued "Love Light" as a single credited to Yutaka, and on 25 July 1981 it reached number 81 on the Billboard Hot 100, a three-week chart run.

Around then he was working as an arranger and keyboardist for other leaders. He arranged and played electric piano on Yoshiaki Masuo's The Song Is You And Me (Electric Bird, 1980), and is credited as a composer on it; he arranged the strings and horns for "Girl Talk" on Greg Phillinganes's Significant Gains (1981); and he appears with the group L.A. Transit on De Novo (1986).

In 1988 he signed to GRP, and Japanese Wikipedia describes him as the first Japanese musician on the label. The three GRP albums are the core of his catalogue. Yutaka (1988) was produced with Don Grusin and executive-produced by Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen, with Yokokura on keyboards and koto, an instrument Japanese Wikipedia says he began playing with this album. Its band included Abraham Laboriel, Nathan East and Vinnie Colaiuta, Oscar Castro-Neves on acoustic guitar, Paulinho Da Costa on percussion, Kazu Matsui on shakuhachi and Pauline Wilson on vocals, and it was recorded in Hollywood and Glendale and at Double "Y" Studios in Alhambra. Brazasia (1990), the title joining Brazil and Asia, was produced and arranged by Yokokura with Castro-Neves, Ricardo Silveira, Arthur Maia, Teo Lima and Da Costa. Another Sun (1993) he produced and engineered himself, with Sergio Mendes co-producing three tracks. Toninho Horta played acoustic guitar on two tracks, Nathan East was on bass, Vinnie Colaiuta, Carlos Vega and Mike Shapiro shared the drum chair, and Ivan Lins wrote "Smile For Me" and sang the vocalese on it. The record closes on Luiz Eca's "Dolphine." GRP's Philippine branch issued The Best Of Yutaka Featuring Pauline Wilson in 1995.

From the mid-1990s he worked mostly behind the scenes as a producer, arranger and engineer from a studio in Alhambra, according to Japanese Wikipedia. Discogs credits him as producer of Pauline Wilson's Intuition (1992), Stay (1993) and Only You (1997), of Tomoko Fujita's Canyon International albums of 1989 to 1991, and of Kevyn Lettau's The Language of Flowers (1998). He engineered and mixed for Lorraine Feather (New York City Drag, 2000, where he also produced the vocals on four tracks, and Cafe Society, 2003, as associate producer), mixed and mastered the Yellowjackets' Peace Round: A Christmas Celebration (2003), played koto and engineered on Marion Meadows's Forbidden Fruit (1994), and played keyboards on Flora Purim's Speak No Evil (2003). From 2006 he played keyboards in Sergio Mendes's touring band, and he also worked under the name Carlos "Yutaka" Del Rosario.

His music has turned up in sampling culture as well. On Jill Scott's "Fool's Gold" (Woman, 2015) Discogs credits him as a writer and as performer of the "Evening Star" elements, the track from Love Light that the song is built on. Japanese Wikipedia also lists a 2012 Novo compilation, The Love Is There - Novo Complete Works.

Yokokura is a keyboardist's arranger whose sound grew from bossa nova. He took up classical piano as a small child, and the first band he led played Sergio Mendes-style Brazilian pop; Brazilian rhythm and harmony stayed under everything he later made. On Love Light it meets Fender Rhodes jazz-funk and fusion, and Discogs files the album under Jazz, with the styles Fusion, Jazz-Funk and Smooth Jazz.

The distinctive move is the Japanese instrumentation. Love Light used biwa, koto and shakuhachi from Kitajima, Matsui and Kuramoto, and from Yutaka onward Yokokura played the koto himself on his GRP records, including "Colors Of The Wind" and "Peach Blossom Spring." One Japanese reviewer reads the early records as the work of a Japanese musician abroad, and hears the GRP albums moving from that "oriental" colour toward Brazilian groove and an adult-contemporary polish.

How much of this is jazz depends on the record. His own albums sit in the contemporary and smooth jazz catalogues, Discogs tags the GRP albums as Jazz with the styles Smooth Jazz, Fusion and Latin Jazz, and Wikipedia files him among Japanese jazz composers and smooth jazz pianists; but Novo was a pop-bossa nova group, and much of his producing work is for vocalists in pop, soul and adult-contemporary settings (Pauline Wilson, Tomoko Fujita, Chad Borja). The jazz side of those credits is clearest in the vocal-jazz records (Lorraine Feather, Kevyn Lettau, Flora Purim).