[Image: Akira Sakata performing at Kongsberg Jazz Festival, Norway, 2018. (Photo: Tore Sætre, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)]

Read the full profile: Akira Sakata on jazzprofiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

If you own a copy of the Yosuke Yamashita Trio's "Montreux Afterglow," you already own an Akira Sakata record. Sakata joined the trio on alto saxophone in 1972 and stayed through 1979, and that 1976 live set from the Montreux Jazz Festival, all two side-long tracks of it, is one of the trio's most-traded reissue-era titles. He's the reed player tearing through "Ghosts" and "Banslikana" next to Yamashita's piano and Shota Koyama's drums.

Sakata was born February 21, 1945, in Kure, Hiroshima, and came to jazz sideways: shortwave radio, Voice of America broadcasts, film soundtracks, then clarinet in high school and alto sax in a college jazz band at Hiroshima University. He trained as a marine biologist before he ever moved to Tokyo in 1969, and he kept the science going alongside the music. His research on the water flea genus Daphnia earned recognition from the Japanese government, and when he started his own label in 2004, he named it Daphnia. It's not a stage joke. It's the actual organism he studied.

Once the Yamashita Trio wound down, Sakata spent the early 1980s leading his own groups, all of it landing squarely in the small-label, Better Days-adjacent scene this project tracks. The Akira Sakata Trio cut "Peking" in 1978 and "Pochi" in 1980. The much larger Sakata Orchestra, two drummers, two bassists, a reeds section big enough to include a young Kazutoki Umezu, released "4 O'Clock" on Better Days in 1981 and "Berlin 28" the following year. The Sakata Sextet's "Trauma" came out on Better Days and Shan-Shan in 1982. Three different lineups, three different sounds, one leader running all of them inside a five-year stretch.

Then came 1986, and a session that put him in company far outside Japan's jazz circuit. Bill Laswell brought Sakata into Last Exit's Tokyo dates that October, playing alongside Sonny Sharrock, Peter Brötzmann, and Ronald Shannon Jackson, with Herbie Hancock sitting in on piano. The recordings became "The Noise of Trouble: Live in Tokyo," and it's the record most non-Japanese listeners first heard his name from. He and Laswell kept working together for decades after.

He nearly lost the ability to do any of this. In 2002, Sakata suffered a brain hemorrhage. He recovered within about three months and went back to performing, and he's kept recording ever since, well into his eighties, with duo and trio partners like Jim O'Rourke, Chikamorachi, and Paal Nilssen-Love's group Arashi carrying him through the 2010s and 2020s. His latest credited sessions are dated 2026.

Where to start listening:

• His official platforms: Official site, Spotify, Bandcamp
• "Montreux Afterglow" (1976) with the Yosuke Yamashita Trio, full album on YouTube
• "The Noise of Trouble: Live in Tokyo" (1986) with Last Exit and Herbie Hancock, full album on YouTube
• Full profile and complete discography: Akira Sakata on jazzprofiles.com

Been getting more into jazz not from the US. As an outsider looking in, I'd prefer more Japanese or Latin American stuff.

I like Casiopea, Himiko Kikuchi and Seatbelt in terms of Japanese jazz, but haven't listened to any Latin American stuff in nearly 20 years and can't remember what I listened to so open season there.

Bonus points if it's bass centered with a good brass section. Must be on streaming.

I discovered this absolute gem while browsing the high-end listening rooms at the legendary Dynamic Audio 5555 in Akihabara. For anyone seeking a pristine vinyl pressing to test spatial imaging, vocal realism, and system dynamics, check out Japanese Songbook "Your Favorites" by jazz vocalist Rika Tanaka (たなかりか).

Despite its reference-level production, this album remains criminally underrated in mainstream circles. If you live in Japan or are visiting and can track down a copy of this limited pressing, you should buy it without hesitation.The absolute standout evaluation track is Side B, Track 2 (B2): her cover of Yumi Arai’s classic "海を見ていた午後" (The Afternoon I Saw the Sea). It is a masterclass in acoustic spacing and micro-dynamics. The micro-details of the instrumental separation provide an excellent test for your cartridge's tracking ability, while her velvety, intimate vocals sit dead-center in the soundstage, making it perfect for assessing midrange realism and depth. The heavy 180g vinyl is dead silent, allowing the music to bloom from a completely black background. It has quickly become one of my absolute go-to tracks for system tuning and gear comparisons.

Here's a sample : https://youtu.be/XpAiPvaU0mM

[Image: Cover art for the "Bridge over Troubled Water". This is cover art, not a photograph of Satoh; no rights-clear photo of him could be located. (Album art via Discogs, used editorially; no CC license claimed.)]

Read the full profile: Masahiko Satoh on jazzprofiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

If you've spent any time near the reissue side of Japanese jazz, you've probably crossed paths with "Belladonna of Sadness" without knowing the pianist behind it. In 1973, Masahiko Satoh wrote the psychedelic, free-jazz-and-funk score for the anime "Belladonna of Sadness" (Kanashimi no Belladonna), a witch-hunt fable directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, with ethereal vocals from his then-wife, actress Chinatsu Nakayama. Original pressings became expensive enough to be a running joke among collectors before Finders Keepers Records gave the album its first official reissue: a 2020 LP that keeps the score "strictly Satoh," dropping the one orchestral cue he didn't write, followed a year later by a limited 7" of two tracks. It's the single most-traded Satoh artifact in reissue circles right now, and it's the entry point, not the whole story.

Satoh was born October 6, 1941, in Sumida-ku, Tokyo, and started on piano at five, after his family moved into a house that had one. He turned professional at 17, accompanying singers and variety acts in Ginza cabarets, and by 1959, at 18, he was in drummer George Kawaguchi's band alongside a young Sadao Watanabe, already an alto saxophonist finding his own voice years before either man led a record under his own name. After Keio University, Satoh spent 1966 to 1968 at Berklee College of Music on a Downbeat Magazine scholarship, then came home and cut "Palladium" (1969) with his own trio, a record that won Swing Journal magazine's Japan Jazz Award and put him on the map as a leader.

The years right after are where his reputation as an innovator really gets built. His 1971 project Amalgamation, credited to Masahiko Sato & the Soundbreakers, is a free-jazz and psychedelic-rock collision engineered by Rudy Van Gelder and produced by Creed Taylor, the same two names behind some of American jazz's most recognizable records; it later landed at number seven on writer Julian Cope's "Japrocksampler" list of essential Japanese rock. That same year, Satoh performed at the Berlin Jazz Festival running a ring modulator through his piano, an odd and early use of electronics for a jazz pianist in 1971. He kept building on that instinct for decades rather than treating it as a stunt: 39 years, from 1981 to 2020, as head instructor of music theory, composition, and piano at Mesa House Music College, and in 2009 he created the chair of Non-idiomatic Improvisation at Tokyo University of the Arts.

He's also kept genuinely strange, rewarding company. In 2012, he recorded "Yatagarasu" (Not Two Records) as a trio with free-jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and drummer Takeo Moriyama, a pairing raw enough that the three of them reunited at Cafe OTO in London during a 2019 Brötzmann festival. A separate set from that same week, Satoh and Moriyama joined by bassist Leon Brichard and saxophonist Idris Rahman of Ill Considered, eventually surfaced in 2024 as "Live At Café OTO" on BBE Music. And he hasn't slowed down since: 2025 alone brought three new releases, "Thousand Leaves" (Trost Records), "Open Cluster" (on his own BAJ Records), and "AOI." Eighty-four years old and still putting records out is its own kind of statement.

Where to start listening:

• His official platforms: Bandcamp and official site
• "Belladonna of Sadness," the 2020 Finders Keepers LP reissue, full soundtrack on YouTube
• "Amalgamation" (1971), the Van Gelder/Creed Taylor session that made Japrocksampler's top 50, full album on YouTube
• "Yatagarasu" (2012) with Peter Brötzmann and Takeo Moriyama, on YouTube
• Full profile and complete discography: Masahiko Satoh on jazzprofiles.com

[Image: Elvin Jones Trio - David Williams Elvin Jones Ryo Kawasaki (Photo: Tom Marcello, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)]

https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-ryo-kawasaki/

r/JapaneseJazz

Ryo Kawasaki Made "Juice" in 1976, Then Walked Away From Touring to Build the Guitar Synth

If you've spent any real time in jazz-funk reissue bins, you've probably already run into "Juice." Kawasaki cut it in New York in 1976 for RCA, his first record on an American label after three years of steady work in the city, and it's since become one of the most sampled, most sought-after crate-digging titles to come out of that scene: seven tracks of guitar over synth and disco groove, reissued as recently as 2022 by the UK label Mr Bongo, with sidemen including guitarist Hugh McCracken and bassist Stu Woods. It's a good place to start, but it's a small slice of a much longer story.

Kawasaki was born on February 25, 1947, in Kōenji, Tokyo, to a diplomat father and a multilingual mother who put him in piano and voice lessons at four and violin at five. He earned a physics degree from Nippon University while building a parallel career as a working guitarist, and by the time he moved to New York in 1973, he'd already released several records of his own back in Japan. In New York he found steady work fast, playing in the Gil Evans Orchestra, Elvin Jones's Jazz Machine, Chico Hamilton's group, and the band Tarika Blue, while touring hard enough that pieces of his own music started forming on the road: "Prism," recorded at Vanguard Studio in July 1975, took shape partly during an Elvin Jones tour, and 1977's "Ring Toss" came together on breaks from that same road schedule.

Then, right as the momentum was building, he stepped back from it almost entirely. Starting in 1979, Kawasaki spent roughly a decade off the road, working directly with Roland and Korg to develop guitar synthesizer technology, an interest that started with a Roland GR-500 he'd bought while still playing standard electric jazz guitar. He wrote four original music programs for the Commodore 64 between 1983 and 1986 and ran his own dance-single label, Satellites Records, on the side. It's an unusual pivot for a touring jazz guitarist to make at the height of his run, and it says something about how he actually thought about the instrument: not just as something to play, but as something to keep building.

He came back to acoustic and electric jazz-fusion through the 1990s, then, sometime in the 2000s, relocated to Estonia, a move that reportedly caught even his own fans off guard. He stayed there for the rest of his life. In Tallinn he recorded the 2001 album "Reval" with local musicians Toivo Unt and Aivar Vasiliev, wrote a jazz ballet called "Still Point" for the Estonian National Opera, and in 2016 formed a new fusion quartet, Level 8, with a group of Estonian musicians decades younger than him. The band's self-titled debut arrived in March 2017, timed to his 70th birthday, and their Kumu Hall concert in Tallinn that same February became a full-length live recording two years later.

Ryo Kawasaki passed away in Tallinn on April 13, 2020, at 73, having put out more than thirty albums as a leader across five decades. In a Facebook tribute after his death, his daughter wrote: "Falling asleep to the sound of you practicing. The smell of black coffee mingled with camel straights." It's a small detail, but it fits a career built on never quite stopping, on always having one more thing in progress.

Where to start listening:

• "Juice" (1976), full album on YouTube, or streamed from Mr Bongo's 2022 vinyl reissue on Bandcamp
• "Mirror of My Mind" (1979), his big-band Open Sky debut with Michael Brecker and Harvey Mason
• Level 8's 70th birthday concert, filmed live at Kumu Hall, Tallinn, February 25, 2017
• https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-ryo-kawasaki/

[Image: Ryo Kawasaki performing on a Gibson SG guitar, Estonia, October 2014. (Photo: Ryo Kawasaki, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)]

Over the past year and a half, I've delved deep into the various DJ specials. This is my curated list of releases, which I feel is comprehensive, although I'm positive there's STILL more to be added, especially for Katsuya Kobayashi. I've seen several lists, however, which had some glaring omissions, and I'd like to put this out there for anyone like me delving into these releases. I hope this is helpful. Thank you, peace and aloha!!

Kamasami Kong:

DJ in Hawaii - KKUA/KIKI Special DJ Showcase Release (1979 & 1983 Re-release)

Surf Break From Seabreeze - Toshiki Kadomatsu (1982)

Moonlight Island (Cassette) - Haruko Kuwana (1982)

The Pacific Paradise (The Pacific Paradise Vol. 1: Winds) - Various Artists (1983 & 2009 Re-release)

S. Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe Kamasami Kong DJ Special - Sugiyama Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe (1984)

Summer Time Romance - Toshiki Kadomatsu (1984)

Palmtree Paradise - Various Artists (1987)

Pacific Oasis (Single) - Various Artists (1994)

Summer Breeze From K.O.N.G. Radio Honolulu - Anri (2000)

Pacific Paradise Vol. 2: Waves - Various Artists (2009)

Dolphin Through: T Square DJ Special - T Square & The Square (2015)

Pacific Oasis Kamasami Kong DJ Show - Various Artists (2015)

FM Station 8090: Citypop & J-Pop - Various Artists (2022)

FM Station 8090: Good Old Radio Days-Daytime Citypop - Various Artists (2023)

UNOFFICIAL: Summertime Romance 1.5 from KKUA - Toshiki Kadomatsu (Unknown Year)

Katsuya Kobayashi:

Non-Stop Soul Now! Disco Party - Various Artists (1976)

Non-Stop Disco Now! Vol. 2 Disco Party - Various Artists (1976)

T.K. Explosion '77 - Various Artists (1977)

The Super Car - Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffaloes (1977)

Yellow Magic Carnival - Tin Pan Alley (1980)

Come Along - Tatsuro Yamashita (1980)

Ride on Time RCA Big New Wave '80 - Various Artists (1980)

Home Grown Party Vol. 1 - Various Artists (1980)

Pop's Punch - Various Artists (1980)

Slipping Through My Fingers - ABBA (1981)

Southern Whistler - Exotics (1981)

Sexy Summer Sounds - Various Artists (1981)

Indian Summer - Masahiro Kuwana (1981)

Home Grown Party Vol. 2 - Various Artists (1980/81?)

Home Grown Party Vol. 3 - Various Artists (1981)

Annie's Specials - Ann Lewis (1982)

Dance! Dance! Dance! - The Shanels (1982)

All Night Hong Kong - Yuko Kawai (1982)

Oldies Station - Lucy & Kento's (1983)

Come Along II - Tatsuro Yamashita (1984)

J Walkin' 24hr. - J-Walk (1985)

Hello Artist DJ Special - Various Artists (1987)

Katsuya Kobayashi Presents Hawaiian Island Music - Various Artists (1992)

Radio DC - Various Artists (1999)

Summer Time Romance II? -Summer Night Romance- - Toshiki Kadomatsu (2003)

Come Along 3 - Tatsuro Yamashita (2017)

FM Station 8090: Genius Club-Nighttime Citypop - Various Artists (2023)

Honest Avenue - Honest Boyz (2026)

UNOFFICIAL: Carlos Toshiki & Omega Tribe DJ Special - Carlos Toshiki & Omega Tribe (Unknown Year)

Miscellaneous:

Disco Embassy - Tropico (1977) - DJ Frank B. Shaner

KIKI Presents The Ventures Big Hits (1980) - DJ Ron Wiley

Disco Revolution - Various Artists (1980) DJ Mark Hagan

Doo-Wop Station! - The Fabulous Kingtones (1981) - DJ Mark Hagan & Carol Hisasue

Best One '82 - Various (1981) DJ Patrick

Summer in Summer - Junko Yagami (1982) - DJ Carol Hisasue

Yoshino Fujimal DJ Version (1982) - DJ Naomi Niwa

Tomorrow's Just Another Day D.J. Special - Yukihiro Takahashi (1983) DJ Yukihiro Takahashi

Air Skip "On The American FM Wave" - Casiopea (1983) DJ Leslie Stovall

Listen To The Air American FM -Various Artists (1983) DJ -Various-

Summer Shadow: Island Pop Special Menu - Featuring American D.J. - Various Artists (1985) - DJ "American D.J."

1986 Omega Tribe DJ Special (1987) - DJ Ron Wiley

Time is a Good Time - Sugiyama Kiyotaka (1988) - DJ Frank B. Shaner

Album cover art for But not for Me

https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-masabumi-kikuchi/

On July 5, 1972, at Victor Studio in Tokyo, Gil Evans landed in Japan for the first time and handed the podium to a 32-year-old local pianist. The result, "Masabumi Kikuchi with Gil Evans," put a 21-piece Japanese ensemble under Kikuchi's own direction, with Evans, tenor player Billy Harper, and trumpeter Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson sitting inside it rather than leading it. It's exactly the kind of small-run, hard-to-find LP the reissue crowd hunts for, and it says something that the visiting legend let the host run the session.

Kikuchi's path there started far from Tokyo's studios. Born October 19, 1939, his family was pushed out to rural Aizuwakamatsu in Fukushima after the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo. He found jazz there, in secondhand records American soldiers had left behind: Ellington, Miles Davis, Monk. By the time he graduated from Tokyo Art College High School, he was already playing professionally, and he joined Lionel Hampton's Japanese touring band not long after.

Before he left for the United States on a Berklee scholarship, Kikuchi ran a quintet with trumpeter Terumasa Hino, whose own catalog we covered earlier on this project. Discogs confirms the pairing twice over: a 1969 release credited to the "Hino=Kikuchi Quintet," and a separate artist entry for the "Terumasa Hino-Masabumi Kikuchi Quintet." Two young Tokyo players, same room, years before either one built the résumé that would eventually include Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins.

Kikuchi's own solo run through the early 1970s and into the 1980s sits right in this project's wheelhouse: "Poo-Sun" in 1970, named for his own nickname, then "Susto" and "Gumbo" in 1981, and finally "One-Way Traveller" on Columbia in 1982. AllMusic has called that last one his own answer to Miles Davis's "On the Corner," and it marks a real hinge point. After it, Kikuchi turned away from fusion and back toward acoustic trio playing for the rest of his career.

That turn led to Tethered Moon, the trio he formed in 1990 with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Paul Motian. They met only intermittently over the next two decades, but what they recorded together, from 1997's "First Meeting" through 2004's "Experiencing Tosca," is some of the most patient, unhurried interplay in his whole catalog. Along the way he'd also worked as a sideman for Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, and Elvin Jones, and collaborated with composer Toru Takemitsu.

Kikuchi passed away on July 6, 2015, in Manhasset, New York, at 75. His discography didn't stop there. "Hanamichi - The Final Studio Recording," drawn from his last sessions, was released in 2021, six years after he was gone, with a second volume following in 2025. Most artist spotlights end at a death date. His doesn't.

Where to start listening:

• Official platforms:
  • Spotify
• Masabumi Kikuchi with Gil Evans (1972) for the session that opens this post: release info on Discogs
• https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-masabumi-kikuchi/
• One-Way Traveller (1982) for his own answer to On the Corner: full album on YouTube
• First Meeting (Tethered Moon, 1997) for the trio years: Spotify
• More on Terumasa Hino, his early quintet partner

Kazumi Watanabe performing in 2011. (Photo: Helgi Halldórsson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-kazumi-watanabe/

In 1979, a 25-year-old Tokyo guitarist named Kazumi Watanabe put together a one-off band called KYLYN. The lineup included Ryuichi Sakamoto and Akiko Yano on keys and drummer Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami, all of them still on the way up. One album, one tour, and decades later it's still cited as a hinge point for the whole Japanese fusion sound of that era. Watanabe spent that same year on the road with Yellow Magic Orchestra too.

He'd already been playing for most of his life by then. Piano at seven, guitar at twelve under Sadanori Nakamura at Tokyo's Yamaha Music School, inspired by the Ventures the way a lot of kids his age were. At fifteen he heard Wes Montgomery and the direction changed for good. His debut album, Infinite, came out in 1971, when he was seventeen.

The 1980s took him further out. He worked as a guest soloist with Steps Ahead and the Brecker Brothers, and spent time inside Jaco Pastorius's Word of Mouth band, sharing a stage with one of the most famous bassists jazz ever produced. That same stretch produced To Chi Ka (1980) and, in 1983, his own fusion band Mobo, formed with saxophonist Mitsuru Sawamura and pianist Ichiko Hashimoto. The Mobo albums and The Spice of Life that followed are still the core of how most listeners find him today. In 1991 he received the Fumio Nanri Award, one of Japan's own jazz honors.

A 1981 Sadao Watanabe compilation on CBS/Sony, titled simply Sadao Watanabe, lists Kazumi Watanabe on guitar in the same personnel sheet as Terumasa Hino and his brother Motohiko Hino on drums, a credit that turned up while pulling Watanabe's Discogs history. The tracks span sessions from 1969 to 1974, so this isn't proof they were all in the same room on the same day, just proof that Sadao Watanabe was drawing from the same pool of players across those years. Small world, even by Tokyo jazz-scene standards.

Discogs credits him on 361 releases total, spanning 1971 into the 2010s. That's a catalog on the scale of Terumasa Hino's, not a footnote next to one famous supergroup year.

The most recent public word on Watanabe is from March 2024: he had collapsed at home in Karuizawa the month before, diagnosed with a cerebral stem hemorrhage, and cancelled all activity for the year to focus on treatment. No further update has surfaced publicly since. It's a quiet, uncertain place for a fifty-five-year catalog to sit right now.

Where to start listening:

• Official platforms:
  • Spotify
  • Official site
• Kylyn (1979, Nippon Columbia) for the year everything lines up: Spotify
• To Chi Ka (1980) for where he went right after: Spotify
• https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-kazumi-watanabe/

https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-tsuyoshi-yamamoto/

r/japanesejazz

In 1974, a 26-year-old pianist named Tsuyoshi Yamamoto became the house player at Misty, a jazz listening bar in Tokyo. He's still tied to that room, on paper, five decades later. His debut album that year was called Misty. So was a live record from later that same year, then two more live volumes in 1977 and 1978, then two more in 2020 and 2021. Different decades, same name on the sleeve.

Yamamoto was born on Sado Island, in Niigata, on March 23, 1948. He was mostly self-taught at the piano, picked up some formal lessons as a kid, and studied at Nihon University. Before jazz took over, he spent the mid-1960s as an accompanist for pop singer Micky Curtis, touring Europe with him in 1967. Then came 1974: a Three Blind Mice recording contract, the Misty residency, and two albums cut five months apart. Misty, recorded August 7 at Aoi Studio, and Midnight Sugar, recorded March 1 at the same studio with bassist Isoo Fukui and drummer Tetsujiro Obara. Both are now cornerstone titles of the Japanese jazz reissue scene. Impex Records thought Midnight Sugar was worth a 45rpm audiophile vinyl reissue in 2017, more than forty years after the original TBM-23 pressing.

What's easy to miss in the reissue-crate version of this story is who else showed up to play with him. Bassist Sam Jones and drummer Billy Higgins flew to Tokyo to back him on Life (East Wind, recorded April 16, 1976, at Onkio Haus). Ray Brown is on Smoke A Moto's Blues (1979). Red Mitchell sits in on Bass Club (1980), alongside fellow TBM regular Isao Suzuki. These weren't Japanese musicians touring through American clubs to prove themselves. These were American first-call sidemen coming to Japan to record under a Japanese leader, on his terms, in his city.

Yamamoto spent a year in New York in the late 1970s, sharing stages with Dizzy Gillespie, Carmen McRae, Elvin Jones, and Sonny Stitt. He kept working through the 1980s on labels like Philips, Paddle Wheel, and Warner Bros., then kept going after that. He's still recording now. The Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio put out a new studio album, A Shade of Blue, in 2023, and Discogs lists fresh live releases dated into 2026. Fifty-two years after his first session, he hasn't stopped.

Where to start listening:

• Official platforms:
  • Spotify
  • Official site
• Midnight Sugar (1974, Three Blind Mice) for the debut that started it all: YouTube
• A Shade of Blue (2023) for where the same trio format sounds now, fifty years on: Spotify
• https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-tsuyoshi-yamamoto/

After a long search the opportunity presented itself and I couldn't resist. No obi sadly (much to the relief of my wallet), the actual vinyl is in near mint condition. More than happy to own this piece of J-Jazz history, it sounds absolutely incredible. :)

Long winded one sorry. I stumbled upon this comp album on Apple Music and really liked it. Asked CGPT about it (for my sins) and it gave me a fascinating run down which I asked it to condense and remove my name etc. I’d never heard of this label but some of you probably will have. Eye opener for me. I’m gonna dig in as I asked for vinyl availability. So here it is in all its AI glory… (hoping it gets past modding as it’s just for info and I couldn’t have dug this far myself)

"Spirit of ‘Days of Delight’ Vol.1 — a Japanese jazz rabbit hole worth exploring
I recently stumbled across Spirit of ‘Days of Delight’ Vol.1 on Apple Music and wondered what on earth it was. It turns out there’s a rather interesting story behind it.
Days of Delight is an independent Japanese jazz label founded by producer Akiomi Hirano (平野暁臣). The idea behind the label is to document contemporary Japanese jazz while maintaining a strong connection with the generation of musicians associated with the extraordinary Japanese jazz scene of the 1970s and onwards.
The label’s first release, DOD-001, was Black Eyes by alto saxophonist Hidefumi Toki.
Spirit of ‘Days of Delight’ Vol.1
Released in 2021 as DOD-018, this isn’t really a conventional various-artists compilation. It’s more like a beautifully curated snapshot of the early Days of Delight catalogue.
The track listing is:
Hidefumi Toki — Black Eyes
RST Trio — 845
Hidefumi Toki + Mayuko Katakura — After Dark
Miki Hirose — The Golden Mask
Yoshio Suzuki + Tsuyoshi Yamamoto — The Loving Touch
Takashi Sugawa Banksia Trio — Time Remembered
Kohsuke Mine — Bamboo Grove
Hidefumi Toki — The Right Time
Interestingly, The Right Time was included as a bonus track that hadn’t previously appeared on an album.
So although the compilation is now available on streaming services, it wasn’t created simply as a streaming playlist. There was a proper Japanese CD release, DOD-018.
And there are now five volumes
The compilation developed into a series:
Vol.1 — 2021
Vol.2 — 2022
Vol.3 — 2023
Vol.4 — 2024
Vol.5 — 2025
The concept is essentially to select music from across the Days of Delight catalogue that demonstrates the label’s particular character.
Hirano has described the common thread as a search for creativity and adventure, underpinned by the ambition, passion and pride of jazz musicians.
That perhaps explains why these records work surprisingly well as albums rather than feeling like label samplers.
Vol.2 is particularly good
Some of the parent albums represented include:
Takashi Sugawa Banksia Trio — Ancient Blue
Includes their interpretation of Blue in Green.
Mayuko Katakura — plays Coltrane
Includes Resolution. This is piano-trio Coltrane rather than an attempt to imitate Coltrane.
Mayuko Katakura — plays Standards
Includes Summertime.
Hidefumi Toki — Little Boy’s Eyes
Includes Sunny.
Ittetsu Takemura — Murasame
Ryo Ogihara — With My Soul
Hikari Ichihara — Anthem
Hidefumi Toki feat. Kazuhiko Takeda — The Guitar Man
There are some fantastic jumping-off points here if you’re interested in Japanese jazz but don’t quite know where to begin with the current scene.
The vinyl story gets even more interesting
Days of Delight also has a small dedicated analogue series carrying DODA catalogue numbers.
Rather than simply pressing all its CDs onto vinyl, the label has used the series for a handful of particularly interesting projects.
DODA-001 — Motohiko Hino Quartet +2: Flying Clouds
This is archival Japanese jazz recorded live in Tokyo in 1976.
The musicians include Motohiko Hino, Mabumi Yamaguchi, Yasuaki Shimizu and Kazumi Watanabe.
Even better, it’s essentially one enormous performance per side:
Side A: Ryuhyo / Sailing Ice — around 21 minutes
Side B: Olive’s Step — around 23 minutes
The recording survived on 2-inch master tape, and its release has a fascinating connection with Three Blind Mice: TBM founder Takeshi Fujii was involved, along with original engineer Yoshihiko Kannari.
For anyone interested in the classic 1970s Japanese jazz sound, this looks seriously tempting.
DODA-002 — Isao Suzuki Quartet +1:
Blue Road
Another archival discovery.
Recorded live in May 1975, very close to the period in which Suzuki made Orang-Utan.
Again, it’s basically one substantial performance on each side:
Side A: Blue Road — 17:19
Side B: Orang-Utan — 19:32
This is perhaps the vinyl release from the series that intrigues me most. Long-form Japanese jazz with enough space for the musicians to stretch out, but with the rhythm section keeping everything anchored.
DODA-003 — Yoshio Suzuki + Tsuyoshi Yamamoto:
Loving Touch
This one provides a direct connection back to Spirit of Days of Delight Vol.1.
The Loving Touch is one of the tracks on that compilation, and the complete album is available as a Days of Delight LP.
It’s an intimate bass-and-piano recording featuring Yoshio Suzuki and Tsuyoshi Yamamoto.
The LP contains:
Side A
The Loving Touch
Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise
Blues for Edith
Cleopatra’s Dream
Side B
Misty
Summertime
Last Tango in Paris
If you already know Tsuyoshi Yamamoto through his Three Blind Mice recordings, this is an obvious one to investigate.
DODA-004 —
TEINE
The analogue series has subsequently reached DODA-004, TEINE, featuring Shun Ishiwaka, Motohiko Ichino and Kanoa Mendenhall, released on vinyl in 2026.
This one represents the contemporary side of Days of Delight rather than another 1970s archival discovery.
Ten Days of Delight albums worth investigating
After following the compilation tracks back to their original albums, these are the records I’d investigate first:
Isao Suzuki — Blue Road ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Motohiko Hino — Flying Clouds ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Yoshio Suzuki + Tsuyoshi Yamamoto — Loving Touch ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mayuko Katakura — plays Coltrane ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Takashi Sugawa Banksia Trio — Ancient Blue ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Kohsuke Mine — Bamboo Grove ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Hidefumi Toki — Black Eyes ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Mabumi Yamaguchi — Trinity ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Hidefumi Toki feat. Kazuhiko Takeda — The Guitar Man / Live at RAG ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Takashi Sugawa Banksia Trio — Time Remembered ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
What I particularly like about Days of Delight is that it doesn’t seem interested in treating the great era of Japanese jazz as something preserved behind museum glass.
There’s a line running from musicians such as Isao Suzuki, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, Motohiko Hino, Kohsuke Mine and Hidefumi Toki, through the classic TBM-era recording culture, and onward into a genuinely contemporary Japanese jazz scene.
So Spirit of ‘Days of Delight’ Vol.1, which initially looked like a mysterious compilation that had appeared on streaming, turns out to be the entrance to a much larger rabbit hole.
And a rather good one" 🎷🇯🇵

I have been listening to music from Tsuyoshi Yamamoto a lot recently and I was wondering if he still performed in Japan?

I'm going soon and would love to hear him live.

(reposting this because I forgot the text and link last time...)

We just put together a Spotify playlist called JazzProfiles Essentials — Japanese Jazz — one track from every Japanese artist profiled at jazzprofiles.com, each one hand-picked from that artist's key recordings rather than auto-generated. The run spans Hiroshi Suzuki's "Cat," Terumasa Hino live at Hi-Nology, Sadao Watanabe with The Great Jazz Trio, Ryo Fukui's "Mellow Dream," CASIOPEA, Kosuke Mine, and the rest of the lineup — a snapshot of the genre from '60s hard bop through fusion to today. Cover's a small mosaic of four of those album covers with our logo dropped in the middle.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5F7fHm2esArl378TOOPFGs

Basically what it says in the title. I am a jazz pianist from Porto and visiting Japan for 2 weeks with my family. I have already been to Tokyo and was surprised by the sheer amount of clubs there were (jam sessions every day with really good conditions - grand/upright acoustic pianos, great musicians). I was wondering if it was possible to make a living just from music in this country and so if anyone needs a pianist for those dates I'd be thrilled to join in (I know a few standards by heart (softly as in a morning sunrise/night in Tunisia/bouncin with bud/Spain/wave) and can read/improvise decently)

Kind regards

Just found this new interview with the amazing bass player Yosuke Inoue. Really interesting and talks about his work with Kazumi, Terumasa, Masahiko, and many others.

https://www.innerviews.org/inner/yosuke-inoue

[Image: Yosuke Yamashita, Tokyo, 2001. (Photo: Manel Armengol, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)]

https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-yosuke-yamashita/

r/JapaneseJazz

Before he was known for anything else, Yosuke Yamashita was one of three young musicians who showed up almost every night at a Tokyo jazz club called Ginparis to argue about the music and play whatever they could. The other two were Terumasa Hino and Masabumi Kikuchi. Hino's own catalog is worth digging into separately; this one's about the third leg of that triangle, the player who pushed furthest out.

Yamashita was born in Tokyo on February 26, 1942. He started on violin at nine, switched to piano as a teenager, and was working professionally by 17. He studied classical composition at Kunitachi College of Music from 1962 to 1967, the same years he was cutting his teeth at Ginparis. His first recording came out in 1963.

In 1969 he formed the Yosuke Yamashita Trio, and by 1974 the lineup, with Akira Sakata on alto sax and Takeo Moriyama on drums, was touring Europe. The live album that came out of that period, "Chiasma," recorded at the Heidelberger Jazztage in Germany, is as good a way as any to hear what made European audiences sit up: three players who sound like they're daring each other to stop first. The trio held together until 1983.

What made him famous outside jazz circles entirely happened in 1973, when graphic designer and filmmaker Kiyoshi Awazu asked him to sit down at a piano and play it while it burned, for a short film. Yamashita later said he felt less like a musician in that moment and more like an object inside someone else's artwork, a strange, honest way to describe playing an instrument that's actively disappearing under your hands. The performance stuck. In 2008, thirty five years later, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa had him do it again, on a beach in Ishikawa.

By the 1980s Yamashita had a new trio in New York, with bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Pheeroan akLaff, often joined by Joe Lovano on saxophone. In 1994 that lineage led to a spot at Verve Records' 50th anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall. In 2003 the Japanese government gave him the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon for his contribution to the arts, and in 2010 he went back to teach at Kunitachi, the school where he'd trained decades earlier.

Yamashita never really slowed down. He's 84 now and still performing, most recently with a newer trio he calls Lotus Position, alongside drummer Him Horikoshi and shakuhachi player Akihito Obama. Sixty-three years after his first recording, he's still the same player who once treated a burning piano as a serious gig.

Where to start listening:

• His official platforms:
  • Official artist page (JamRice)
  • YouTube
  • Spotify
• "Chiasma" (MPS, 1976) for the trio at full force, live in Germany
• The 1973 burning piano performance, still circulating on video, for the moment that made him a name outside jazz altogether
• https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/ja-yosuke-yamashita/

Jiro Inagaki with Chuck Rainey. From 1978. Never seen this before coming across it in Kyoto. Includes a version of the Starsky and Hutch theme!