Tomoyasu Hotei, known as HOTEI (‘hoe-tay”), is an acclaimed Japanese guitarist, songwriter, composer, performer and record producer, who currently resides in London. HOTEI has sold more than 40 million records in a 35 year career to date, and is best known internationally for the song “Battle Without Honor or Humanity”, which was made famous by its inclusion in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movie.

HOTEI began his career in 1981, as co-founder, guitarist and principal songwriter of legendary Japanese rock band BOØWY, who enjoyed phenomenal success as one of Japan’s most popular and revered bands.

HOTEI established himself as a solo artist in the late 80s, after the break up of BOØWY. His debut solo album “GUITARHYTHM” (1989) was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London and its huge success was followed by a string of multi-million selling albums, each one musically different to the last.

HOTEI has contributed to many films, including the Terry Gilliam classic “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1996); he created a new arrangement of the theme song for “Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol” (2011) and performed the song at the premier. HOTEI has also contributed to many successful Japanese films with notable directors, including the Junji Sakamoto films “K.T.” and “Shin Jingi Naki Tatakai”, and Hiroyuki Nakano’s influential “Samurai Fiction” and “Red Shadow”. He also wrote and performed the theme song for detective movie “Lupin The Third”, one of Japan’s biggest films of 2015; Recently HOTEI wrote new theme songs for several programmes on NHK and Fuji TV (2017). He remains in demand as a composer for film and TV. Edit Biography