INDEX
Drawn to Japanese Jazz Circa 1970
The album includes a cover of “Love,” originally recorded by Japanese jazz drummer Akira Ishikawa (editor’s note: the piece was composed by pianist Hiromasa Suzuki). What made you want to include this song?
Okada: It ties back to an interest I’d started developing a little before I encountered Theaster Gates’s exhibition — specifically, in the different experiments happening in Japanese jazz around 1970. Around that time, I visited the Koenji record shop UNIVERSOUNDS for the first time and spent a lot of time talking with the owner, Yusuke Ogawa, about spiritual jazz and Japanese jazz in general.
That period in Japanese jazz coincided with broader international movements, with musicians drawing not only from the U.S. but also from so-called Third World music, and incorporating a wide range of non-Western elements.
Okada: Yes, exactly. Alongside the point where free jazz experimentation had more or less been taken as far as it could go, there were many records that resonated with a more fundamental, almost primordial sense of crossover. Some musicians looked back to Afro-centric elements as a way of retracing jazz’s roots, while others turned inward, toward local traditions, engaging directly with Japanese folklore.
For example, “Gin-kai,” the collaboration between shakuhachi player Hozan Yamamoto and the Masabumi Kikuchi Trio?
Okada: There were plenty of cases where Japanese instruments were simply placed on top of easy-listening–style jazz, and I don’t necessarily dislike that approach. But “Gin-kai” goes well beyond that. It’s a remarkable record, no matter when you listen to it. Later on, ECM became known for producing cross-cultural collaborations between musicians from different backgrounds, and “Gin-kai” feels like a clear precursor to that kind of work.
Akira Ishikawa, on the other hand, is often discussed in the context of Japanese rare groove, and he also made many jazz-rock records. Still, “Love” stood out to me as having a very particular resonance. When you look closely at the relationships between musicians from that era, you start to see just how much crossover was actually taking place. In that sense, I’m drawn to both strands, and the way they reflect on musical and cultural roots doesn’t feel so far removed from my own perspective.
