Ryo Fukui started out in Yokohama during a time when Japanese musicians were figuring out how to play jazz in their own way, not just copying what Americans were doing. In the late 1960s, you can hear him listening closely to McCoy Tyner's dense piano playing and Herbie Hancock's electric stuff, but he took those ideas and made them quieter, more personal, and more interesting to listen to. He had the discipline of a trained pianist combined with the mind of someone who knew how to write actual songs—he built pieces that felt natural and flowing, not like they were made to sell records.

His best work came out in 1976 with the album Scenery (1976). It's six songs that somehow manage to feel both small and big at the same time. He played with bassist Hiroshi Yoshimura and drummer Tsuguhito Nakaoka, and they created something really clean and easy to hear. "Early Summer" is calm and spacious; the title track "Scenery" lets silence do a lot of the work; "Prettiness" sounds almost like classical music. The thing that makes it special is that he never separated what jazz musicians do from what he wanted to say—they just fit together naturally.

After Scenery (1976), Fukui kept experimenting. Mellow Dream (1971) and Promenade show him moving into fusion and electronic sounds without losing the warmth that made his playing feel human. He worked with saxophonist Sadao Watanabe and switched between acoustic and electric piano like it was nothing. Everything stayed elegant no matter what he was playing.

For a long time, most people in the West had no idea who he was. That wasn't because he wasn't good—it was just that he recorded for small Japanese labels that didn't get shipped overseas. Lots of Asian jazz musicians who came later learned from what he did, and pianists today still talk about how smart his chord choices were. Now that his records are on streaming services and getting repressed on vinyl, people are finally hearing what he actually accomplished.