Atsushi Yanaka

Atsushi Yanaka was born on Christmas Day, 1966, in Hino, Tokyo, and went through Waseda's affiliated high school. He works as an actor, lyricist, and musician, which is accurate but flat. To anyone who follows Japanese music he is the baritone saxophone and a principal lyric-writer of Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra — a band whose whole identity is a horn section moving as one body. That combination is the part I find unusual. Horn players tend to speak through the instrument and leave the words to someone else; lyricists tend to sit outside the wall of brass. He does both, inside the same group, and then acts on top of it. Careers built that way usually dilute into competent-at-everything. His didn't, and I suspect that's because the sax line and the lyric line are coming from the same place rather than from a man collecting job titles.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Atsushi Yanaka

Name (Japanese)

谷中敦

Reading

やなか あつし

Born

December 25, 1966 (age 59)

Origin

Hino, Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

actor / lyricist / musician

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Horse

High school

Waseda University Junior and Senior High School

University

Waseda University Junior and Senior High School

Works summary

Appearances

52 (1994–2025)

By year (titles with a known year)

1994: 1, 1997: 1, 1998: 1, 1999: 2, 2001: 1, 2002: 2, 2004: 2, 2005: 4, 2006: 4, 2007: 4, 2008: 2, 2009: 2, 2010: 3, 2011: 2, 2012: 2, 2013: 2, 2016: 2, 2017: 2, 2019: 1, 2020: 1, 2021: 3, 2022: 2, 2023: 2, 2024: 1, 2025: 1, year unknown: 2

Debut work

Don't Leave Me

Filmography / notable works

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/a.yanaka/
• Xhttps://x.com/a_yanaka
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B0%B7%E4%B8%AD%E6%95%A6
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11632601

Tags

• Tokyo
• actor
• lyricist
• musician

Last updated

September 29, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.