Kitaro (喜多郎 Kitarō), born Masanori Takahashi (高橋 正則, Takahashi Masanori) (February 4, 1953), is a Japanese recording artist, composer, record producer, and arranger noted for his electronic instrumental music, and is often associated and regarded as one of the most prominent musical acts of new age music. He is the winner of a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album (Thinking of You (1999); with a record 16 nominations in the same category) and a Golden Globe Award for the Heaven & Earth (1993) original score.

Kitaro was born in Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan, and is a graduate of Sahid University. After graduating, Kitaro moved to Tokyo to experience and become a part of the music scene, and it was there that he discovered the synthesizer. His first synthesizer was analog, and he recalls having "just loved the analog sound that it made compared to today's digital sound".