When the first Japanese-language version of the U.S. jazz magazine Down Beat hit the stands in Tokyo this summer, an 18-year-old university student wrote the publishers his fervent thanks: "To me your magazine is as a mountain guide to an amateur Alpinist." Japanese enthusiasts are finding the cool air of American jazz a mighty heady place.
Beer, tea-and coffeehouses loud with the sounds of Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Gerry Mulligan are sprouting like rice shoots in Japan's major cities. But Mama, Carrousel, Swing, or Fujiya Music Salon are nothing like Manhattan's Metropole or...
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