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 Birdland. Instead of the usual clutter of tables and clatter of highballs, Japan's hipsters sit in desklike seats set in rows of two, railroad-style, sipping their drinks in scholarly contemplation and rarely speaking, as jazz, either recorded or live, engulfs them in smoky parlors. Girls in the crowd affect tight toreador pants; the boys are mighty sharp in Ivy League coats and peaked caps pulled down tight to their dark glasses.
American jazz was first imported in the 1920s, and became "enemy music" to Japan's generals in World War II. Western music came back deafeningly in the U.S. occupation. In the years since, Japanese fans have staggered through the big-band beat, calypso, rockabilly and other crazes. Beginning last year, modern jazz, progressive and otherwise, has taken over the joints. At last count, Japan has some 3,000 union-registered jazz musicians noodling away at the out sounds of such current favorites as Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey and Miles Davis. They have even picked up the lingo, and added soy sauce. Though cool (pronounced "koo-roo") and beat ("beato") survived the Pacific crossing almost intact, the U.S. term funky (meaning earthy) is disparaging Japanese for beatnik. Shinu (literally: I die) means being overwhelmed, and if the sounds are too far out, they are ikareteru (meaning out of order).
A Japanese jazz buff named Shoichi Kusano, 29, sold Down Beat editors in Chicago on a Japanese edition of the jazz magazine, sold out 2,000 copies of the first issue at 50¢ each, expects soon to be selling 10,000 copies per issue, almost half the magazine's U.S. sales. The September issue features a story called "Tragedy of Newport Festa," telling of the riots that broke up the Newport Jazz Festival this summer. In this case, the Japanese got there first: at Tokyo's first jazz festival last summer, an overflow crowd almost tore down the joint to hear a succession of Japanese big bands and combos and moan "Shinu, shinu, shinu."