Ryo Fukui was a Japanese jazz pianist based in Sapporo. He played regularly at the "Slowboat" jazz club in Sapporo, which he and his wife Yasuko owned. Fukui taught and performed internationally until his death in 2016. His work has seen a spike in popularity after his death, with several reissues of his albums.

Japanese jazz is jazz played by Japanese musicians, jazz connected to Japan or Japanese culture, or both. The term often refers to the history of jazz in Japan, which has the largest proportion of jazz fans in the world, according to some estimates.