ROUTE 04

The Japanese Listening-Bar Pilgrimage.

Tokyo's listening-bar lineage runs from the post-war jazz kissaten to the modern hi-fi rooms where conversation is rationed and the sound system does the talking. Bar Martha is the canon. The atlas reads the geography around it.

The listening bar is a Japanese export. It began in the music cafés of the late 1920s and in Yokohama in 1933, when Mamoru Yoshida opened Chigusa and spent a third of his wages on imported jazz records rare enough to assemble strangers around a single phonograph and a single speaker for an evening; the Tokyo rooms multiplied after the war. Seven decades later, the form is a global subculture: Brilliant Corners in London, Public Records in Brooklyn. The Tokyo originals still set the bar. This route is two nights in Tokyo, at Bar Martha and Blue Note Tokyo, and a day trip north by Shinkansen to Jazz Kissa Basie in Ichinoseki, the jazz kissa Count Basie visited in 1980. Basie opens only some weekend afternoons, so plan that day loosely. Phones away. Conversation low. The room is the instrument. Listening bars elsewhere: Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

The rooms on this route.

Bar Martha

VENUE_049 · JP

BAR MARTHA

TOKYO · 35.65°, 139.71°

A listening bar in Ebisu, Tokyo, run by Wataru Fukuyama's Martha Records group. No reservations, no photography, voices kept low, open 19:00 to 03:00 year-round.

TYPEBar

FREQRock · Soul · Jazz

BLUE NOTE TOKYO

TOKYO · 35.66°, 139.72°

The Tokyo branch of New York's Blue Note, open since 26 November 1988 and now at 6-3-16 Minami-Aoyama. About 280 reserved seats, short runs by touring players, no dress code.

TYPEBar

FREQJazz · Soul · Fusion

JAZZ KISSA BASIE

ICHINOSEKI · 38.93°, 141.13°

Shoji Sugawara's jazz kissa in Ichinoseki, Iwate, open since 1970 and built around speakers he made himself in the 1970s. It opens only some days, so check before you travel.

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Stitch your own week of beautiful music.

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Listening bars elsewhere

The same idea, ninety years on and three thousand kilometres south: Hear more, say less, the Sonic Paths feature on Thailand's listening bars, with guides to Bangkok and Chiang Mai and twenty rooms, each with its own page.