HACHIDAI NAKAMURA 中村八大オフィシャルサイト HACHIDAI NAKAMURA 中村八大オフィシャルサイト

Biography

中村八大

中村 八大HACHIDAI NAKAMURA

Hachidai Nakamura is a Japanese popular composer and pianist, who is one of the innovators of Japanese popular music and produced important musical materials that we are proud to the world. He has talent since he was a young teenager as a pianist , and in his early twenties he became famous as a top Jazz pianist with outstanding musical arrangement. He played the piano throughout his life.
Also he wrote many standard songs as a composer and improved Japanese popular music which were comparable to the world.

Hachidai Nakamura was born on January 20, 1931 in Qingdao, China where was his farther’s foreign assignment location.
When he was a fourth grade elementary student, he moved to Japan from Qingdao to Japan by himself. He went to the Ueno Music School for children and studied under Naotoshi Fukui and Shinichi Takada. After that, he went back to Qingdao and studied classical music under Dakar Herz.
He went back to Japan in 1944 due to World War II intensified. After the end of the war, he started his career as a professional musician when he was a highschool student.

In 1950, he went on to Waseda University and he was in a band named “Shin Watanabe and Six Joes”. In 1953 he joined a band named “The Big Four” and he made a substantial contribution to Japanese jazz trends.

After that, he formed his band and continued performing music. In 1959, “Kuroi Hanabira”, composed by Hachidai Nakamura and written by Rokusuke Ei, became a big hit and they received 1st Japan Record Award. Next year they released “Tasogare no Beguine”.

Hachidai Nakamura held his recital titled “Hachidai Namaura 3rd recital” in July 1961. He wrote a song named “Ue Wo Muite Arukou” for a singer Kyu Sakamoto and the song became a big hit in Japan. In 1962, an English jazz band, Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen covered the song titled as “SUKIYAKI” and made a hit with 10th rank in England. The original music sung by Kyu Sakamoto was released as “SUKIYAKI” in 1963, and then it topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and held the ranking for 3 weeks. Since then, A Taste of Honey and 4PM covered this song and both of the songs were ranked in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100’s top10. “Ue Wo Muite Arukou (SUKIYAKI)” became one of the global standard songs.

With Rokusuke Ei, Hachidai Nakamura wrote songs for the music TV show “Yume de Aimashou” by NHK, and the songs became nationally popular songs such as “Konnichiwa Akachan”,”Tokue Ikitai”,”Mebaete Soshite”,”Kaerokana” and “Osananajimi”.

Hachidai Nakamura participated in “1st International Popular Music Festival” held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as a representative of Japan. He recived “Best Orchestration Arrangement Award” and “Special Award” with a song titled “Watashi dake no anata”. After the following year he had been invited as a contest judge. In Japan, he received grand prix awards of “Yamaha Nemu Popular Music Festival” with songs, “Namida wo koete” (1st festival) and “Namida” (2nd festival) for the second year in a row. He succeeded as one of the representative musician of Japan in name and in reality.

Hachida Nakamura kept performing and participating in many music festivals at home and aboard, and especially he held many joint concerts at home and abroad with Rokusuke Ei. He won first prize with a song “Bokutachi wa konohoshi de deatta” at “1st Yuji Koseki Music Festival” in 1991.

He was suffering from diabetic in the latter years of his life and he passed away from heart failure at the age of 61, on June 10, 1992.