Brilliant Corners

Arriving in Japan from the United States is like being turned upside down. This condition lasts for much of the first week. When I visited in November, the time difference between Tokyo and New York was 14 hours. "The floating world" is a term for the pleasure-addled urban culture of Edo-period Japan, but it's also an apt description for the twilit and not-entirely-unpleasant weirdness of first arriving in Tokyo. Everything seems slightly unreal.

I'd come to Japan for several reasons, one of which was simply to spend more time in what for me is the most enjoyable place on the planet. Another was to explore the country's distinctive listening spaces, which I've been thinking and occasionally writing about over the past few years. During that time, listening bars and cafés from Boulder to Sydney have been popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm, and for many of these new venues, Japan's jazz kissas (or kissaten in the Japanese plural) are both the model and spiritual mothership.

Much has been written about the Japanese penchant for jazz and other aspects of American culture. This affinity is paradoxical and complex, taking root despite the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the ambiguities of the US military occupation. But in Japan, jazz remains nearly unavoidable, to a degree I haven't encountered anywhere else. During a snowy week spent on the northern island of Hokkaido, I had a memorable lunch at Takutsu, an eight-seat sushi counter in the quaint port city of Otaru. While the chef handed out beautiful pieces of sailfish and mantis shrimp, Thelonious Monk played on the sound system. That evening, when I sat down at Nanakamado, an ice cream shop in Sapporo crowded with 20-something couples, Monk was on the speakers again. (To be precise, Nanakamado serves a Sapporo specialty called shime parfait—a wildly elaborate dessert containing ice cream and at least a dozen ingredients that's consumed after a night of drinking, the way ramen is in Tokyo. Sapporo is very cold. I don't know what to tell you.)

In case you're unfamiliar with jazz kissaten, they are bar-cafés with stellar record collections and hi-fi systems, catering to visitors who want to hear well-reproduced music while enjoying drinks and each other's company. The listening takes place in an atmosphere of attention and hushed near-silence. This aspect of kissa etiquette accords with Japanese society, which values harmony above all, and there's rarely a need to enforce a respectful noise level. In fact, during visits to a half-dozen of these places, the only customers I saw being hushed were foreigners in various degrees of crapulence.

Amusingly to English speakers, the proprietor of a kissa is known as the masuta, the Japanization of "master." They hold sway over nearly everything that goes on at their establishment: the selection of drinks and snacks, the hi-fi components, and of course the records being played. Visitors tend not to make musical requests, instead appreciating the expertise and taste of the masuta. And the proprietor's demeanor goes a long way toward determining a kissa's atmosphere and feel, which can range from fairly low-key to fanatically nerdy.

Kissaten are nearly as old as recorded music. One of their first mentions occurs in Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's novel Naomi, published to considerable scandal in 1926. It depicts a "modern girl"—the Japanese analog of a Jazz Age flapper known as modan gāru, or mo-ga for short—frolicking in Ginza cafés that resemble contemporary kissaten. These cafés often sprang up near college campuses, catering to the Westernized tastes of the educated youth.

The popularity of kissaten exploded in the postwar era, reflecting the public's intense interest in jazz as well as the fact that LPs and perfectionist hi-fi gear were simply too expensive for most Japanese. The heyday of these establishments is captured in Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel Norwegian Wood. It takes place in late-1960s Tokyo, a city stirred by student activism and political unrest, and features a scene set in Dug, a legendary kissa owned by photographer Hozumi Nakadaira in Tokyo's Shinjuku district. Murakami knew his subject well: In the late 1970s, he had worked at Old Blind Cat, a jazz kissa located not far from Dug, and later he and his wife ran a tiny jazz club near Shinjuku's Sendagaya Station.

There are fewer kissaten today, but they remain a vital part of Japan's urban landscape, and new listening spaces continue to open their doors. On a Slow Boat is one such place, a relatively new kissa in Ochanomizu, a Tokyo neighborhood known for its musical instrument shops and outposts of the massive record store Disk Union. Step inside and you'll see a counter covered with glass jars of coffee beans, an espresso machine, and several tables. You might think you're inside an ordinary café until you notice the record shelves, TEAC turntables, Luxman amp, and vintage Altec Lansing Model 18 speakers.

The café's kind-faced, soft-spoken owner, Shigetoshi Shirasawa (below), told me that he was a salaryman working in IT until jazz began taking over his life. He spent much of his free time at Tokyo's kissaten, wrote record reviews, and during work trips to New York went to hear live jazz every night. When the COVID-19 pandemic offered an opportunity to pause, Shirasawa realized he needed to make a drastic change. Soon after, he and his wife, Yoshiko, opened the café, which he named after both the Frank Loesser pop standard "(I'd Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China" and the Murakami short story named after the song. In addition to overseeing the hi-fi and coffee, Shirasawa, who goes by Shige, also bakes the desserts, and while listening to a Kenny Drew LP, I tried a piece of carrot cake, which in the Japanese fashion was just barely sweet.

The music at On a Slow Boat sounded impeccably sweet and colorful—some consider the rare Model 18 to be an endgame speaker—but was played relatively softly. A few customers read at the bar, and two young couples were enjoying their drinks. Shirasawa told me that jazz and hi-fi fanatics usually show up on weeknights, while the rest come for the good pour-over coffee and the lovely atmosphere, of which the music is a part. He then put on a vinyl copy of my friend Jerome Sabbagh's album Vintage, which made me think about home.

What I thought about was how wonderful it would be to have a café like On a Slow Boat back home in Brooklyn. My partner Elijah, a classical musician, was equally charmed by the place and seemed to be entertaining the same fantasy. Then I remembered that the café would be filled with Brooklynites, with our Instagram addictions and tendency to conduct private conversations at a volume stage actors use when working in 1200-seat theaters.

We had been brought to On a Slow Boat by Shigeko Sekiguchi, a jazz publicist and former Disk Union employee who seemed to know just about everyone in the local jazz scene. Our next stop was one of the classic Tokyo kissaten, the Eagle (not to be confused with the nearby gay bar of the same name), located near Shinjuku's Yotsuya Station, just down the street from Sophia University. In contrast with the laid-back and cozy On a Slow Boat, the Eagle turned out to be decidedly serious. No talking is allowed until 6pm. Afterward, it becomes more like a typical bar, though on the evening we visited the patrons remained mostly silent. Looking around, it was clear that they had come for the music; a number of them, mostly men of all ages, sat at the sparsely spaced tables by themselves, reading or simply listening.

A pretty space paneled in light wood, the Eagle serves pizza, spaghetti, desserts, and the usual combination of coffee and alcohol. As in every kissa I visited, the air-moving was accomplished with hefty American-made speakers, in this case a pair of wall-mounted JBL 4344 MKII studio monitors. In a kind of deejay room that's off-limits to customers, I spotted an Accuphase C-280V preamp, a Mark Levinson No.23.5L power amp, a pair of Accuphase DP-67 SACD players, and two Yamaha GT-2000 record players outfitted with Denon 103 moving coil cartridges. The sound was dynamic, clear, and loud.

Sekiguchi introduced me to the Eagle's masuta, one of Japan's leading jazz critics and author of many books on the subject. Masahiro Goto (below) turned out to be garrulous and funny and clearly used to attention. He told me that he opened the café in 1967, when he was 20 years old, and still runs it alone. The Eagle's first customers were mostly long-haired college students, some of whom kept coming after they had become middle-aged salarymen. Goto said that in recent years he has seen more women and visitors from abroad. We talked for a while about some of his favorite Charlie Parker recordings on Savoy, and when I volunteered my enthusiasm for the music of Eric Dolphy, he disappeared into the deejay room and emerged with a first vinyl pressing of Out There, which he kindly put on. It sounded fantastic.

I asked Goto about what made a kissa special—was it just an alternative to listening to records at home, but on a better system and with the possibility of pasta? He considered my question. It was the community, he said finally. He explained that regulars often met outside the Eagle to see live jazz, and some had struck up friendships that extended beyond that. But even within the kissa's walls there was the important act of listening together. Goto's playlists provide an education, plus there is an opportunity to learn from other listeners and even regular talks by critics and other music experts. And in a more fundamental sense, there's the communal act of affirming that this music—and close listening itself—matters. Then Goto let out a belly laugh and went to attend to another customer.