Jun Ishikawa (composer)

, sometimes known as Mushio Funazawa, is a Japanese composer. Along with Hirokazu Ando, Ishikawa is best known for composing for the Kirby video game series. He left series studio HAL Laboratory in 2023 but has continued to compose for Kirby games. Early life Ishikawa started taking piano lessons aged 3-4, but felt he could never become good at it despite practice. Later, he discovered artists such as Paul Mauriat, Isao Tomita, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Brian Eno. He also purchased a Roland SH-2, as he wanted fellow students to get into Tomita’s music, but the synth was the cheapest he could afford. Later he attended Nihon University’s College of Art, studying film music. As a student, he gained experience with recording and mixing for a theater, while occasionally writing what he considered to be poor pieces of music. HAL Laboratory Ishikawa worked at two companies prior to joining HAL Laboratory. He eventually found an advertisement for a sound creator job at HAL; although he had not previously heard of this profession before, he decided to apply for it, which led to him joining in 1990. His first work was composing one track and sound effects for Uchuu Keibitai SDF,