During the 16th and 19th centuries, traders transported vast numbers of enslaved Africans to the Americas in what is known as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. To the white American slave owners, these people were nothing more than disposable labor. What they did not acknowledge or even realize at the time, however, is just how influential and important these people could be. Their hardships and presence are well known to have aided in the building of remarkable architecture, such as the White House, the development of the American economy through cotton picking, and to revolutionizing political policies. What many forget or are unaware of is the cultural fusions that gave birth to an array of foods, dialects, celebrations, and even music. Jazz is one of these lesser known products, with deeply imbedded African and American roots. Although its history is entrenched and intertwined with American history, however, jazz is not just limited to the United States of America. In fact, it has garnered a big voice and presence in other parts of the world too, even more so than in the United States. In Japan especially, there is a high propensity for jazz music. Despite this however, little research has been done to learn more about the origins and history of what is now known as Japanese Jazz. In fact, most of what has been discovered can really only be found in two books: Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan by E. Taylor Atkins and Jazz Journeys to Japan by William Minor. This paper will seek to compile the information gathered from both to explore how jazz took shape in a place not American.
Japan’s initial exposures to jazz begins with the Philippines. Before being recognized as an independent republic in 1946, the Philippines underwent a large period of turmoil. They were first ruled by the Spanish, but at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, they were handed over to the United States (Treaty of Peace). During this time under US occupation, American jazz artists and visiting jazz enthusiasts introduced and established this new, foreign, and inherently western style to the Filipino people (Minor). Traveling Filipino jazz bands would visit other countries, and thus began the story of Japanese Jazz. In the 1920s, around the time in the United States when jazz was gaining huge popularity with the raucous culture and activities of the roaring twenties, jazz began to emerge in Japan (Atkins). The Japanese developed their practice based on the Filipinos and their performances. With their success as entertainment districts, Osaka and Kobe became the hotspots for dance halls where Japanese-born musicians would use these halls as opportunities to get on stage and professionally perform jazz themselves (Atkins). One such musicians was Fumio Nanri. In 1926, Nanri began to receive acclaim for his trumpeting (Sugiyama). He spent time studying abroad, where Tommy Weatherford taught him how to improvise. Nanri would return to Japan and form his group, the Hot Peppers, and he is believed to be the first recorded Japanese soloist (Sugiyama).
Towards the end of the 1920s, conservative Japanese elites were concerned with the appeal of jazz as liberal dance music and began to view jazz as “too American” (Atkins). As a result, the dance halls of Osaka and Kobe were closed. Musicians and enthusiasts flooded to Tokyo to find employment within recording companies and resorted to playing in house orchestras. Many people, such as Ryoichi Hattori and Koichi Sugii, tried to overcome this criticism by reworking jazz to Japanese standards (Atkins). Traditional Japanese songs and anthems were rewritten and performed with characteristic jazz styles, including upbeat emphases, swing, and improvisation. These largely differed from the clean, succinct, folk style of traditional Japanese tones. Overtime, public opinion towards jazz began to shift and was more accepted. The first jazu kissa, or jazz coffeehouse, opened in 1933 in Osaka, and many others began to dot the map afterwards (Atkins). The latest jazz recordings were played and the occasional live performance was offered to welcoming ears.
The start of the Second Great War changed everything. With the United States as part of the Allied Powers and Japan one of the three Axis powers, jazz was deemed “enemy music” and the government placed a national ban (Atkins). By this point in time, however, jazz had become too popular and the ban was incomplete and unsuccessful. Composers made patriotic songs that were jazz-like, and these continued to be performed. It was the end of the war that revived jazz. With American troops on Japanese soil during the Allied Occupation between 1945 and 1952, Japanese jazz musicians were encouraged to return to the surface (Minor). The Americans wanted to hear the music from home.
From the end of war, through the 1960s, and onwards, Japanese jazz flourished. Many notable talents appeared. Toshiko Akiyoshi, an international success, started off as a promising, hopeful, but unknown pianist in Tokyo in the 1950s (Minor). She was noticed by Hampton Hawes while she was performing with the Cozy Quartet and was introduced to Oscar Peterson (Minor). She was eventually sent to the United States where she studied music at Berklee School of Music in Boston before rising up and becoming an internationally recognized big band leader and bop pianist (Minor). Jazz in Japan would receive criticism, from both Americans and Japanese. Many exclaimed that jazz was a lowly imitation of American jazz, that it was unoriginal and poor in taste and style (Atkins). It was thanks to artists like Toshiko Akiyoshi and her husband Lew Tabackin who worked to incorporate a Japanese style into their work that jazz continue to prosper in Japan and garner increasing popularity.
Today, Japan harbors a tightly knit and passionate community of jazz enthusiasts, centered in Tokyo, as well as in Osaka and Kobe, the hearts and birthplace of jazz in Japan. As a western style that harshly conflicted from the regal and conservative characteristics of this part of the world, its development in this East Asian country was tumultuous. Through the collection of interviews and observations collected by E. Taylor Atkins and William minor, it was obvious that there were many forward and backwards steps as jazz tried to find its holding. “Japanese Jazz” does not refer to a cultural entity or a Japanese possession, but to a fusion. From Africa to the United States of America, to the Philippines, to Japan, the growth of jazz in this particular country is a fusion of all of these places and of multiple eras in history. When one thinks of jazz, they initially think of places like Chicago, New Orleans, and Harlem, but they must remember and acknowledge Osaka, Kobe, and Tokyo. As E. Taylor Atkins once said: “Yes, it comes from America, but it belongs to everyone now, and when we add our own things to it, it belongs to us.”