This is a brief overview of some of the general types of places that you may find in Japan, to help you learn more about and find the places you may want to visit.
Variations of Jazz Spots
There are many types of jazz spots in Japan. By jazz spots, I mean jazz clubs, jazz joints, jazz rooms, jazz spaces, jazz places… basically anywhere that jazz is featured as a draw or essential feature of the establishment.
Some commonly found jazz environments include:
Dimly-lit bars
Bright jazz cafes
Casual hole-in-the-wall joints
Spacious clubs
Fancy restaurants
Mini-theater listening rooms
Classroom-style sessions
These spots can range from big spacious rooms to tiny neighborhood bars. They can be bright or dark, elegant or dingy, and pretty much everything in between.
There are places that worship jazz with fanatical reverence that jazz addicts may regard as sanctuaries, and there are simple places where the quality and selection of music take priority over the furnishings and decor.
There are also fancy, upscale places that play jazz music for an elegant aural atmosphere, otherwise heavenly settings where jazz is just part of the decor.
This overview introduces the general types of jazz spots available by categorizing them and listing some differences so that you can choose the best types of places that you may want to visit or learn more about.
An Incredible Abundance of Jazz
One of the most remarkable aspects of jazz in Japan is realizing how many unique and special places there are to discover. Discovering how appreciated jazz is in Japan and how many musicians and listeners support the art is sometimes a surprise. This can be especially eye-opening for those fans who live in places where jazz music is underappreciated or ignored completely.
A love for this jazz culture in Japan and the new music that it brings is what motivates me to share this information here. It’s all owing to the great musicians I’ve met, the friends I’ve made, and all the CDs, clubs, notes, and photos I’ve collected during the last twenty years.
At the same time, one challenge here is to resist the urge to supply too much information. Discovering great places on your own, and experiencing the moment of entering a new spot for the first time without knowing exactly what to expect, are part of the fun of your jazz journey. No spoilers, as they say.
So, the goal here is to find a balance of the right level of information to share, to whet the appetite, and to provide useful information, but not in an exhaustively descriptive or overly detailed way.
Finding Jazz Spots
If you are visiting Japan and want to choose a place to go to listen to some live jazz, you may be initially overwhelmed by the number of places you may find. This is especially true in a big metropolis like Tokyo.
Also, non-Japanese speakers and solo adventurers have extra hurdles to overcome. Finding interesting jazz spots and live events requires decoding websites, parsing the posted live schedules, and understanding any rules or etiquette for any particular place.
There are also practical challenges like finding the best routes to clubs and understanding the cost structure and payment methods.
What is the entry charge?
Music charge?
Table charge?
Are there per-person minimums?
Are foreign credit cards accepted? Some places only accept cash (in Japanese yen, naturally).
The most convenient way to gather information about jazz clubs in Japan these days is to search online and dig through lists of clubs, search results, and review sites to find the answers.
Lists of Jazz Spots in Japan
When posting lists and descriptions of Japanese jazz clubs online, it is a difficult task to compile a directory of places, especially when trying to keep the details up-to-date and accurate. Online lists can be extremely useful, and some typical references are listed in the Related Resources section below.
One problem with online sites is that, once articles are published they can become filled with stale information as time passes and the listed clubs close down, open, relocate, change websites, or even change directions.
It can be frustrating to search for a specific location while traveling and be disappointed in the result, or not be able to find the spot at all. Knowing more about the different types of spots, being flexible with your plans with backup options, and being able to search for similar spots nearby can help with these challenges tremendously.
This Jazz of Japan newsletter, in addition to album posts, also introduces jazz spots in Japan. On this site, articles about jazz spots are compiled in the regularly updated Jazz Clubs Index and the Clubs Archive.
Types and Factors for Jazz Spots
To keep this overview simple, three types will be used to group jazz spots in Japan.
For example, do you prefer live music or recorded music?
Also, some common factors will help describe the different places within each type.
For example, do you prefer stylish and expensive settings, or casual spots that may be rough around the edges?
These types and factors should help listeners to find the places that they like. They can ease the time-consuming process of looking up places online and help to avoid wasting time and money by skipping places that you may not like.
This article, Part 1, covers the general types of jazz spots in Japan, and follow-up articles will further describe the factors with examples.
Types of Jazz Spots
For simplicity, jazz spots can be grouped into three types or categories based on activities:
Live music: Live spots with musicians performing live
Recorded music: Listening spots with recorded music
Jam sessions: Spots for musicians and customers to play together
A fourth, fifth, or more types could be imagined, but starting with these three types provides a great starting point as an overview.
Type 1: Live Music
Jazz club is a general term for a place that features musicians playing live music, often on most days of the week. These can also be called live spots or live houses. Other terms like performance venue, recital hall, concert hall, and others are also used, but not as widely for jazz spots.
Most of the interesting places for general jazz listeners fall into this type of jazz spot. Live music is an important, even essential part of the jazz tradition, and the word live itself (rhymes with five) is even used as a standalone abbreviation word in Japanese.
For example, when speaking with native Japanese speakers, you may hear phrases such as “Are you going to a live tonight” or “Please come to my live next week.” In this way, the term live may stand for live show, live performance, or in some cases live schedule.
Spontaneous Creation and Collaboration
On-the-spot improvisation is a large part of jazz music, where listeners can be thrilled by the result of years of dedicated practice and the musical imagination of jazz musicians. The many decades’ worth of superb jazz records may likely always be an important part of a jazz fan’s life, but seeing jazz performed live in person is one of the most satisfying parts of this musical world.
A live show allows listeners to experience in-the-moment musical creation built on skill, imagination, and partnerships. The music is made, created, and improvised by musicians through intuition and skill. As the moment moves on, the lasting experience is imprinted in the memories of the attentive listeners who were there
The Live Jazz Club Experience
In the imagination of the general public, this type of jazz spot captures the experience of what it is like to visit a jazz club.
Thanks to popular movies and shows, anyone can imagine the experience of what it is like to attend a jazz club as a listener: To be seated in an audience area at a table or bar, to watch and listen to jazz musicians on a stage, to have our attention focused towards the artists spotlit with stage lights and mic’d through a high-quality sound system.
Depending on the type of club, that stage may be a nice elevated platform at one end of the room with professional spotlights and video feeds, or it may just be a corner of the room barely separated from the listeners’ tables and chairs.
Type 2: Recorded Music
Jazz kissa is a common term for places that play recorded jazz music. These spots can also be called jazz bars or jazz cafes, but these terms are fairly general and are sometimes also used for places that feature live music.
Jazz kissas are places that focus on playing recorded music. Kissas (or kissaten, 喫茶店, coffee shop) offer a curated selection of music from the owner’s jazz collection, often played through audiophile-quality sound systems. These are sanctuaries for jazz lovers to spend time listening to recorded music in a lower-keyed atmosphere as compared to live jazz clubs.
Other places that may play jazz music are certain hotel bars, restaurants, small cafes, and similar places that use jazz as BGM (background music) for ambience. As mentioned above, the regular use of jazz music at cozy restaurants, tidy cafes, and a variety of shops is a welcome and surprising element for jazz fans and visitors who are used to hearing louder genres of music in otherwise quiet settings.
Third Place
The term third place is apt for this type of environment.
The third place is not your workplace, not your home, but your other place. It’s the place you go to unwind, relax, and get away from it all, a place that somehow feels like it belongs to you. It’s your regular hangout and a place that can foster and maintain social connections.
This term has been used more and more in an ever-busier world. As “work-from-home” environments increase and the line between office and home blurs even more, the third place hangout may even become more valuable.
Levels of Active Stimulation
While live jazz clubs offer live music and the personalities of the performers, these are usually events that supply a certain kind of stimulus including active listening verging on a sense of communal participation for the audience members.
It’s also not uncommon for strangers to start a conversation in the set breaks, especially true in some of the tinier jazz spots in Japan where tables may be shared and seats may be set fairly close together.
At times when this kind of active stimulus may not be desired, recorded music may provide a different kind of balm. Kissas and similar places may offer the sense of escape, of sinking into a more subdued world where jazz flows and envelops you. This can be great for immersion in your own private oasis of music.
Also, listening to the classic albums or personal favorite records from a professional jazz fan’s collection is exciting. It provides the opportunity to review famous highlights together, share common appreciation, and discover new albums.
Type 3: Jam Sessions
Some jazz spots are focused on students, amateur, or hobby musicians who are looking for places to hone their craft or learn how to play jazz. Jazz jam sessions are an honored part of the jazz universe, and it’s not surprising that many jazz fans are also amateur musicians of some level.
In addition to the many places where you can listen to professional musicians, there are also a great number of places where anyone can join in. Amateur musicians and even professional touring musicians will often seek out these jam sessions to learn, practice, and play together.
These jazz jam spots are superb meeting places for jazz musicians of all stripes to congregate, practice, make connections, and make jazz. They can also be great fun for non-musicians as well, to just listen and soak up all the unpredictability of live, unplanned sessions.
Depending on the specific session, amateurs of any level and even beginners may be welcome and encouraged to join. Certain other sessions may have a higher bar and be geared toward players with more experience and knowledge of jazz. As many session seekers know, the best way to find out is to first attend a session as a listener, to discover the level of musicians that are participating, and to learn about any particular rules. Even just by sitting and listening at a session, it’s a good bet that someone will strike up a conversation to ask you if you are a musician and if you are going to join the session.
Along with jazz clubs and kissas, many places offer jam sessions intermittently on their schedule alongside regular live shows. Some places, “jam session centers”, specialize in hosting sessions and educational workshops rather than live shows. One of the best-known spots in Tokyo for its famous nightly jazz jam sessions is Intro, along with its partner restaurant location Cafe Cotton Club (with sessions on Fridays) right across the street.
To Be Continued…
Coming soon: notes on well-known places, “top 10” spots, lesser-known but beloved favorite neighborhood shops, and the fascinating (and sometimes tinier than ever imagined) jazz corners of Japan.
Related Resources
Here are some helpful sites that contain club directories or related information about jazz in Japan:
Jazz of Japan (this site, of course ☺)
Magazines (more useful in print editions; some out of print):
Jazz Hihyo (Jazz Critique) (1967-)
Jaz.in (2023-)
Jazz Japan (2020-2023): back issues
Swing Journal (1947-2020): digital collection 1 and 2
If you know of other good resources, please let me know by replying to the newsletter email or in post comments.