Tokyo swing
The sound arrived during the war years, but Japan remains a paradise for jazz lovers, writes Steve McClure
It's a weeknight and there's a full house at Tokyo jazz club b-Flat. The drinks are flowing, and people are letting their hair down after a busy day at work.
But you can hear a pin drop as veteran American jazzman Lew Tabackin coaxes delicate notes from his flute in the style of the Japanese shakuhachi. The last, fragile sound floats out of the instrument and the room erupts in applause: the jazz fans at b-Flat know quality when they hear it.
Respectful, loyal audiences are a big reason many jazz musicians keep coming back to Japan. Some have even made their home in the country. And although jazz may no longer enjoy the cachet it had when it was something new and foreign, the Japanese jazz scene is alive and well. Fans can enjoy jazz of every stripe and colour at clubs, bars, concerts and festivals, and albums by leading domestic jazz artists can sell up to 100,000 copies.
Japan has been in love with jazz since its heyday here in the 1950s and '60s. Its fans, free of the wartime xenophobia that lumped jazz in with other "harmful" foreign influences, eagerly embraced a musical idiom whose sense of freedom and soul matched the nation's optimism as it rose from the ashes to achieve its amazing economic miracle.
Record collectors, DJs and club people, [audiophiles], live music lovers [and] art music lovers
"Jazz was very popular at that time, but its popularity has subsided as pop music has taken over," says Tokyo-based jazz trumpeter and bandleader Mike Price, a Chicago native who first came to Japan in 1976 as a member of Japanese-American pianist-composer Toshiko Akiyoshi's big band. "But there are still a lot of loyal fans, who enjoy jazz of all kinds."
Not a few Japanese got their first dose of jazz from the US armed forces' Far East Network radio station, or in the jazz clubs and bars that sprang up to cater to the US troops stationed at Japanese bases. It didn't take this quintessentially American music long to put down roots in Japan. It became cool for impecunious students and bohemian types to nurse a cup of espresso while listening to Miles, Duke and Mingus in the jazz kissa (coffee shops/bars) that sprang up in cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka.