Katsuhisa Hattori (服部 克久, Hattori Katsuhisa, born November 1, 1936) is a Japanese classical composer who also writes music for anime movies, TV series and OVAs. He is best known for his soundtrack compositions for Argento Soma and Hiroyuki Morioka's "Seikai" (stars) anime series.

Biographie

Hattori was born in Tokyo, Japan. He is an extremely respected composer in Japan; his style is classical, although he is experienced and respected in many other genres, such as New Age, Jazz, etc. He is the son of Ryoichi Hattori and father of Takayuki Hattori, who both are musical composers as well.
In 2000 his life and musical works were honored in an hour-long Japanese television special. He has conducted many famous orchestras, but most of his own compositions are performed by the acclaimed "Tokyo Pops Orchestra".

Besides being a composer, he has been a producer and music supervisor for many years, and now has his own publishing company, "Hattori Music Publishing". He is also pianist, judge and a chairman for the Tokyo music festivals.

In 1989, Katsuhisa Hattori and his son, Takayuki Hattori, who is also a composer, produced the first orchestrated Final Fantasy music CD for critically acclaimed video game music composer Nobuo Uematsu. The CD was performed by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and entitled "Symphonic Suite Final Fantasy". In 1991, again at Nobuo Uematsu's request, he produced three Final Fantasy tracks for the first "Orchestral Game Concert" CD (tracks 13, 14 and 15) and two for the second Orchestral Game Concert.


Legal Difficulties
In September 2002 the Tokyo High Court ordered Hattori to pay 9.4 million yen in damages, ruling that there was a strong similarity between his song, "Kinenju" (記念樹, "Memorial Tree"), and Asei Kobayashi's song "Dokomademo Iko" (どこまでも行こう, "Let's Go To Eternity Together").

Asei Kobayashi's music publisher, the Kanai Ongaku Shuppan company, who gave JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) permission to manage the song "Dokomademo Iko" in 1967, claimed that JASRAC had illegally allowed the use of the sound-alike song. In December 2003, the Tokyo District Court ordered JASRAC to pay 1.8 million yen in damages, for allowing the publishing, broadcast and sale in CD form of Hattori's song. This decision was overturned by the Tokyo High Court in 2005.


Recent Works
In 2005, Hattori released a three-track CD called "Seikai no Senki III ED", for the OVA Seikai no Senki III, and a non-anime related CD, "Author's Best Vol.2".