SOUNDS OF SILENCE
JAZZ KISSA OF JAPAN
BY JAMES HUSSEIN CATCHPOLE
Whether jazz, soul, rock, reggae or even European classical, Japan has a bar that caters to every type of music fan. To become a regular at a music bar, you are not just a customer conducting a transaction, but an integral part of a human interaction between you, the owner and the sounds that pour from the space.
“We live through our shops, these jazz kissa. The spaces themselves exist on their own, with the music being the lifeline. The music is everything.”
But how did this get started? And why did Japan, more than anywhere in Asia (and in the case of jazz, I’d argue, anywhere in the world), embrace Western music so thoroughly that there are an estimated fifteen hundred music-listening bars in a country not even the size of California? For that, let’s hit the time machine to go back a bit, as in one hundred sixty-plus years.
After mainly being closed off to the rest of the world for more than two hundred years, Japan rapidly opened and embraced overseas influences in the late nineteenth century, from law to medicine to engineering, but also, crucially, music. European marching bands quickly became a fixture in Japanese schools, and starting as early as the 1910s and ‘20s, 78 rpm jazz albums were imported, and local jazz bands and dance halls were opening all over.
In the years before World War II, from the mid-1930s, Western culture was slowly being rejected, as the government moved towards a vigilant brand of cultural nationalism. Collectors of pre-war jazz albums often hid them from the prying eyes of the secret police and their informers during this time, as they could be construed as “corruptive Western influence.” However, from day one, after the war ended, jazz bars popped up near the extensive black market streets around Shinjuku Station in Tokyo.
Jazz bars, rockabilly dance halls and European classical music tea rooms were soon found in all Japanese urban centers and many small towns nationwide. In a rapidly rebuilding and urbanizing Japan in the 1950s and ‘60s, where housing was tiny and audio equipment and imported albums were prohibitively expensive, listening to new album releases, in particular, was often done outside the home.
The ultimate example of this, and a world I have spent my life exploring wholeheartedly, is the jazz kissa (a diminutive of jazz kissaten, roughly translating as jazz café). This culture boomed in the 1960s as students, hippies and artists gathered at the many spots that could be found all over Tokyo. One old guidebook from 1970 lists over two hundred thirty jazz bars and kissa scattered throughout the city.
While speaking to owners and customers for this piece, Mr. A, a loyal patron for over fifty years, remarked on his early days and how Japan’s economic state brought people to music cafés. “It was very hard to afford new albums in those days when the yen was fixed at three hundred sixty yen to the US dollar, and salaries were low. And that’s if you even had a rudimentary stereo system at home! For many of us wanting to listen to a new jazz release, the jazz kissa was our only option. You could sit all afternoon, have one or two cups of cheap coffee, and listen to a bunch of albums. It was our education.”
A jazz kissa is a world of its own, the individual creation by an owner and, in many ways, an extension of their homes (and themselves). Many owners have told me over the years that they spend way more time in their shop than in any room of their homes, and see no real distinction between the two spaces anymore.
Some owners may tend to focus their collections on types of jazz while some may prioritize one region (the now sadly closed Mary Jane in Shibuya was well known for its extensive selection of European jazz albums). Few shops, notably Eagle in Yotsuya, still adhere to a ‘no talking’ policy during the daytime café hours. Others, like the cozy Ragtime in a distant, residential neighborhood in western Tokyo, have a system to write down your request on a small slip of paper at your table. Bar First and Chigusa in Yokohama even present a full menu of their collection, free for you to browse and choose an album for them to put on.
After a while, customers begin to sense the quirky differences in each kissa; DownBeat and Eagle play the music strikingly loud; Candy often has extreme free jazz on the turntable; Rompercici has cake and tea sets to rival any fancy shop in Ginza. Umi in Saitama, open since 1952, takes such pride in its audio system that the owner enthusiastically will take you on a complete tour of all the components. When mentioning the amount of detail in audio equipment found in kissa bars throughout Japan, Mr. Yoshino, the editor of Audio magazine, shed some inspiring and almost spiritual thoughts: “An audio system is a living being, and you have to think carefully about how you handle it. The sound changes day by day, depending on how you interact with it. Just like people, you know?”
Jazz kissa that have flourished since the 1960s or 1970s share specific atmospheric details, through a sense of clutter, old Japanese jazz magazines, flyers from important concerts in years past adorning the walls, often with the lingering smell of decades of smoke and alcohol ingrained in the walls. And, of course, all that wonderful jazz vinyl in cabinets and shelves around the joint. However, the most important common denominator is the special relationship forged between the owners and customers over the years.
Nagasaki – Milestone
Urban Japanese geography necessitates minimal housing. On average, a seventy square-meter apartment could suit a family of four, leaving little space for extensive record collections (or, more importantly, alone time to pump the volume on some heavy tunes). For jazz fans, the kissa remains not only an escape from the stress of daily life in some of the most crowded cities in the world, but also a place to lean in and focus on some deep listening with like-minded people.
On numerous occasions, I’ve witnessed the end of a fantastic LP being soaked up; when the master changed records, customers erupted into conversation about the sound, artist, label, pressing, cover art and band lineup, all with such intensity and enthusiasm. One table I observed was a trio of die-hards debating for an hour whether a Japanese Blue Note release was mislabeled or not!
Being a regular at a kissa, once you’ve been accepted in, can be both soothing and solitary if you want to sit alone and listen, or lively and chatty if at the counter with some regulars and the owner. All are centered on the deep, loving connection shared for the music. Language doesn’t need to be a barrier in a jazz kissa; my first time visiting one so many years back, I just pointed at the Charles Mingus album playing and said, “It swings!” The owner immediately smiled, welcoming me with my five-word Japanese vocabulary at the time. I was enchanted; these places became my second home, and I started spending more of my free time in them, enveloped by the warm sound of the speakers, the conversing hum of the regulars, and the endless bottles of beer.
Similarly, when Eilon came to Japan in October 2023, he wandered the country for several weeks, visiting music cafés. Like my first kissa encounter, he only spoke the language of music, but was blessed with Google Translate on his phone. “What I observed was such an organic means of living—seeing people taking breaks from the hustle of their daily routine to enter these temple-like spaces with shrines dedicated to jazz players from over six decades ago. There was also such respect for the area’s environment; if anyone needed to talk, it was done quietly. These spaces were breathing extensions of the owners’ homes and are the center of their lives, filled with rituals and habits that make the kissa a truly unique habitat.”
Although these cafés were numerous throughout Japan, many modern musical genres have what is often now called in the Western press ‘listening bars’, particularly soul and reggae. What’s fascinating is that the younger customers, who have grown up with digital access to much of this music, still appreciate the vinyl-only vibe of the bars and kissa. Mr. Yoshihisa, the thirty-six-year-old owner of DownBeat Jazz Café in Yokohama, has such a positive perspective for posterity when relating to this. “I’m seeing more and more younger customers these days, and wonder if this world has an intimidating image to the young Japanese, potentially making them feel unwelcome, but slowly, that has been changing. The atmosphere, as a result, has been changing too; I still keep the shop in the old jazz kissa style in many ways, but I’ve also added a few things, like weekend afternoon DJ sessions that bring in a different type of crowd. The jazz kissa is evolving, and the other types of music bars are more open and less snobby than they used to be.”
The number of visitors to Japan has skyrocketed each year; many overseas music fans are experiencing more than just the jazz kissa, but nighttime-only bars that play other genres of sound, like Soul Stream in Shinjuku or Bar Martha in Ebisu. Music Bar 33 & 1/3 has a vast collection of rock, soul and jazz albums, and the owner has made an extensive website in English to explain all about his bar.
Many foreign guests are very attentive to the style of Japanese music cafés, the vast collection of vinyl, sophisticated audio systems, extensive knowledge of the owners, and the playing of full album sides, inspiring many music fans worldwide to open their own places. In the last ten years, Manila, Bangkok, Seoul, Berlin, London, Buenos Aires, Santiago, New York, Portland and Los Angeles have all seen the Japanese design of listening bars open in their cities, bringing this approach to a whole new customer base.
Since moving from New York City to Japan more than twenty-five years ago, I’ve slowly embraced the more relaxed pace of life these jazz kissa and music bars encourage. My friend Benedict, who owns the Rhinoceros Bar in Berlin, has a similar take. “In this lightning-fast connected world, a trend has developed to try and slow things down. With vinyl, as opposed to listening via streaming services, slowing down and listening to a full-length record has become popular again. It can be difficult in Western culture to get people to concentrate for more than forty-five minutes, but in Japanese bars, that is more common. And this has become very interesting for a lot of us now.”
When you think about it, it makes so much sense. Modern life is so frantic and relentless, with the flow of endless information hitting us from all angles. People work more than ever, with even less time for soft, quiet contemplation. A few hours in a listening bar, really focusing on one side of an album and not just streaming one tune here and there, then chatting with others about the music; it’s not just fun, but therapeutic in a genuine sense.
This applies to all the vinyl collectors featured in this book, too; we can all get stuck down some pretty bottomless rabbit holes, constantly searching for that album, checking prices, reading about reissues, and spending more time on the collecting than the listening. Japanese jazz kissa and listening bars are like a temporary oasis; a time to sit back, sip a drink, and briefly lose yourself deep into the music in a way all too rare in the modern world. ●
