Tokyo Jazz Joints

Stephen speaks to Philip Arneill, the man behind the photobook Tokyo Jazz Joints. The jazz kissa, or jazz café, is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. Tiny coffee shops with huge collections of jazz on vintage vinyl run by enthusiasts. The kissas started in the 1920s, before the second world war, but began to thrive in the post war period, particularly in the 60s and 70s reaching somewhere in the region of 600 café’s across Japan, each one a type of street corner jazz museum. However, the owners are getting older and with every passing year, the number of jazz kissas declines. Philip Arneill is a photographer from Belfast who lived in Japan for 20 years and has forensically documented this phenomenon in a project he calls Tokyo Jazz Joints. It’s a book but it’s also of series of installations, one of which he brought to the Sound of Belfast Festival recently. On this show, we hear a sample of the music of the jazz kissa and find out more about this remarkable subculture.

Photo by Philip Arneill. Used with kind permission.