Hideo Mizokami was born in Fukuoka prefecture on August 5 in 1936. The scores of his work, “Women’s Choral Music Collection”, was published when he was studying at Kunitachi Ongaku Daigaku (Kunitachi College of Music). Mizokami graduated from the college in 1959. He composed pieces for the NHK program, “Uta no Ehon (Picture Book of Songs)” and provided television music for drama series such as “Jūdo Icchokusen (Jūdo as the Crow flies)” in 1960s. He also wrote vocal music such as “Mizuiro no Hana (A Flower of Sky Blue)” and “Moshi-moshi Konnichiha (Hello, Good Afternoon)”. The cantata “Hakodate Gensō (Hakodate Fantasy)”, which has a duration of one hour, was completed in 1979.

The international activities of Mizokami can for example be seen from the exhibitions of his works which were held in June 1989 in Beijing and in July the same year in Italy. Mizokami’s “Piano Sonata” was played at the Persia Contemporary Music Festival, and his work for organ “Unchū Kuyō Bosatsu ‘gaku’ ” as well as “Koō” for piano duet and percussion and “Cyclorama” for piano duet, percussion, and strings have moreover been performed all around world.

When looking at the activity and work of Mizokami, two aspects stand out in particular: firstly, he was a leader of Japanese eurhythmic music education, and secondly, he was a composer who extended the repertories of piano pieces for four hands. Regarding the first point, eurhythmics as proposed by E. J. Dalcroze was regarded as an important part of Japanese preschool education. Mizokami was the head of the Eurhythmics Music Institute and a regular board member of the All Japan Eurhythmics Music Education Society. Concerning the second point, the performances by Sachiko Kodama and Kunio Kodama of Mizokami’s compositions are notable. “E no nai Ehon (Picture Book without Pictures)”, published by Zen-On Publishing Company in 1974, is a piano piece for four hands based on the children’s stories by H. C. Andersen. The composition sets eleven of the thirty-three short stories from the original work to music. Since this work can be somewhat difficult to play, Mizokami composed “E no nai Ehon Daini-kumikyoku (Picture Book without Pictures the Second Suites)” in order to make more people able to perform and enjoy the piece. These two works, having a touch of the moon light and the scent of roses, present various forms of musical dialogues and are rich in variations.