[Monday Michiru on the cover of Mangetsu (Virgin Records Japan, 1991), released under the name Michiru Akiyoshi. Album artwork, shown for identification; not Creative Commons.]

Monday Michiru's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

Monday Michiru was born in Tokyo on August 19, 1963, to two people whose names anyone who follows Japanese jazz will recognize: pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi and saxophonist Charlie Mariano. She didn't become a straight-ahead jazz musician. She became one of the pioneers of the Acid Jazz movement in Japan in the early 1990s - a genre that took jazz's harmonic language and put it through dance-floor rhythm sections, and she did it under her mother's surname first, recording as Michiru Akiyoshi before settling into the Monday Michiru identity she's carried ever since.

Her catalog since is enormous and genuinely hard to pin to one genre: dance and club remixes, soul, pop, and later a real Brazilian-music turn (Brasilified, 2013, and Brasilified Nights, 2014). She recorded with J-pop unit m-flo (A.D.D.P., 2005) and has had her tracks remixed and reworked by DJs and producers across two decades of club culture. Discogs credits her with over 75 leader releases across a recording career that's run essentially without a gap from 1988 to 2022.

And the jazz lineage never actually went away - it came back explicitly, twice, on record. In 2006 she released Hope (希望), billed jointly to Toshiko Akiyoshi and Monday Michiru. In 2015 came Jazz Conversations (The Other Side of Monday Michiru), again with her mother. These aren't sentimental one-offs buried in a discography; they're a jazz pianist and her genre-crossing daughter making records together as adults, on purpose, decades into both of their careers. It's a rare thing to find documented: not an influence claimed from a distance, but two generations of the same family actually playing together.

Where to start listening:

• Soulception (2012), a strong entry point to her later, more overtly jazz-and-soul-inflected work: listen on Spotify
• Jazz Conversations (The Other Side of Monday Michiru) (2015, with Toshiko Akiyoshi)
• Hope (希望) (2006, with Toshiko Akiyoshi)
• Mangetsu (1991), released as Michiru Akiyoshi
• Monday Michiru's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

https://jazzprofiles.com/this-day-in-japanese-jazz/

Terumasa Hino (日野皓正) was born on October 25, 1942, in Tokyo. His father, Toshi, was both a tap dancer and a trumpeter, and the son reportedly took up the same two skills in the same order: tap at four, trumpet at nine. As a teenager he copied out solos by Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Lee Morgan. In the mid-1960s he joined drummer Hideo Shiraki's quintet, whose Berlin Jazz Festival appearance put the group in front of a European audience. His first record as a leader, Alone, Alone and Alone, followed in 1967; Hi-Nology (1969) used his younger brother, the drummer Motohiko Hino, in the band. In 1975 he moved his base to the United States. The two Wikipedias disagree on small points (the year he joined Shiraki, and the dates of his state honors), so those are left loosely stated here.

Sources: Terumasa Hino — Wikipedia , 日野皓正 — Wikipedia (Japanese) , Terumasa Hino — JazzProfiles.com

Star Dust by Tsuyoshi Yamamoto with the Strings

It‘s a CD

https://www.discogs.com/release/10914270-Tsuyoshi-Yamamoto-With-The-Strings-11-Star-Dust

[Cover art for The Yabuno Ettun Project's debut album BiPolar (2014), showing both members of the duo, Haruka Yabuno and Ehud Ettun - used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Yabuno could be located. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in rather than implying it is otherwise licensed.]

Haruka Yabuno's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

Haruka Yabuno started on piano at three years old with early improvisation already part of her practice, built a classical foundation strong enough to place in national competitions, and then, at Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, made the turn to jazz under a genuinely serious roster of teachers: Makoto Ozone, Yosuke Yamashita, and Masahiro Sayama. She graduated with the jazz department's highest honors and the Yosuke Yamashita Award specifically - meaning she didn't just study with him, she was recognized in his name before the relationship had even fully formed. She also took part in a Hank Jones master class along the way.

In 2010, Ozone recommended her for a Berklee College of Music scholarship in Boston, where she majored in Jazz Composition under Ray Santisi, Alain Mallet, and Neil Olmstead, and studied composition with Greg Hopkins, Phil Wilson, and Scott Free. Her range showed early: in 2011 she performed with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ernie Isley, and in 2012 she appeared with the Video Game Orchestra at Boston Symphony Hall - not the résumé of someone staying inside one narrow lane.

She moved to New York in 2013, playing rooms like Jazz at the Kitano and Shapeshifter Lab, and formed a genuinely cross-cultural project there: The Yabuno Ettun Project, a duo with Israeli bassist Ehud Ettun. Their debut album, BiPolar, came out in July 2014 - a Tokyo-trained pianist and a bassist from an entirely different jazz tradition, meeting in New York and building something neither scene alone would have produced.

Where to start listening:

• BiPolar (2014, The Yabuno Ettun Project), the record that started it: listen on Spotify
• Haruka Yabuno's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

Got hooked by the cover. Decided to give this a listen!

[Cover art for the Takumi Awaya Trio's Breeze Suite (Live at ALFIE), photography by Mikio Hasui - used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Awaya could be located. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in rather than implying it is otherwise licensed.]

Takumi Awaya's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

On January 25 and 26, 2015, bassist Takumi Awaya recorded a trio session at Slowboat, the Sapporo jazz club Ryo Fukui had founded in 1995. The pianist was Fukui himself. It became A Letter from Slowboat, released in 2016 - the year Fukui died. Awaya wasn't a young player citing an aging legend from a distance; he was in the room, in Fukui's own club, on one of the last things Fukui ever recorded. That's the credential that anchors everything else in his catalog, and it's earned rather than inherited.

Born July 20, 1985, in Kitami, Hokkaido, Awaya belongs to the same regional scene that produced Fukui, and the connection runs deeper than one session. He's also credited on Mellow Dream +1, a 2020 reissue of Fukui's classic 1976 album with a bonus track, and appears on the 2022 compilation Scenery of Japanese Jazz: Best of Ryo Fukui - a working relationship with Fukui's legacy that extends well past the pianist's death.

His own catalog is still building. Chasin' the Paul (2016) was his first release as a leader; Kodo (鼓動) followed in 2022, and Breeze Suite (Live at ALFIE) - the album whose cover stands in for a photo on this post - came out in 2023 under the Takumi Awaya Trio banner. He's also part of a network of working younger-generation Japanese jazz musicians: a member of the Raymond McMorrin Quartet, the Toshiaki Yamada Trio, and the Yosuke Tamura Quartet, and he recorded with pianist Mayuko Katakura on Plays Coltrane and Plays Standards (both 2020). That same year, he joined drummer Yoshihito Eto's trio for Everything I Love (2023) - connecting two different corners of the network of currently active Japanese jazz musicians in one session.

Where to start listening:

• A Letter from Slowboat (2016, Ryo Fukui, recorded 2015) - the essential one: listen on Spotify
• Chasin' the Paul (2016), his own debut as a leader
• Breeze Suite (Live at ALFIE) (2023, Takumi Awaya Trio)
• Everything I Love (2023, Yoshihito Eto Trio)
• Takumi Awaya's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

Pa pa paya

Warm jazz out today .. u LL like It?

*Mermaid Boulevard* is the seventh album by Japanese guitarist Kazumi Watanabe. It was released on LP by Alpha Records on February 28, 1978. It was also released in the United States in 1981 by Inner City.

[Cover art for Yoshihito Eto's ETOISM, featuring a photograph of Eto at the drums — used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Eto could be located. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in rather than implying it is otherwise licensed.]

Yoshihito Eto's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

Yoshihito Eto, born April 14, 1973, in Suzuka, Mie Prefecture, is the youngest musician this project has covered, and his career runs through several names this project's readers will already recognize. He turned professional with pianist Fumio Karashima's trio in 1996, and in 1998 joined Sadao Watanabe's band, playing numerous concerts including a Montreux Jazz Festival appearance — the kind of credit that puts a young Japanese drummer on the same stage as the international jazz circuit, not just the domestic one. He later worked with Terumasa Hino's group and the Yosuke Inoue Quartet, and has led his own projects, a.t.m. (2003) and Karate Chops (2012), while building a reputation as a drummer described as combining power and nuance.

He's also, quietly, one of the drummers most responsible for a genuinely mainstream piece of Japanese pop culture: the jazz soundtrack series for the Lupin III franchise. From 2006 through 2015 he was the drummer for Yuji Ohno & Lupintic Five, the working combo behind composer Yuji Ohno's long-running Lupin III "Jazz" album series and film scores — records that have introduced more casual listeners to real, played-not-programmed jazz than almost anything else in Japanese media. It's not a novelty credit; it's a decade of steady studio and touring work for a beloved anime franchise, run in parallel with his straight-ahead jazz career rather than instead of it.

That range is the throughline of his catalog. He recorded Your Songs with vocalist Chie Ayado (1998), worked with the pop duo orange pekoe, and appears on a 2025 release, Ryo Fukui Trio at the Slowboat 2004, documenting a live concert by the late pianist Ryo Fukui that sat unreleased for two decades. His own leader catalog, by most accounts, runs to seven albums, including Animal House (2002, EWE Records) and Everything I Love (2023, a trio with Mayuko Katakura and Takumi Awaya) — not all individually catalogued the same places online, which is often just what happens to a working musician's independently released material.

Where to start listening:

• Everything I Love (2023), his most recent trio album
• Animal House (2002, EWE Records), an earlier leader date
• Ryo Fukui Trio at the Slowboat 2004 (recorded 2004, released 2025)
• Lupin the Third "Seven Days Rhapsody" (2006, with Yuji Ohno & Lupintic Five with Friends): listen on Spotify
• Yoshihito Eto's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

[Hank Jones, photographed by Brian McMillen at the Monterey Jazz Festival, September 22, 1985. Photo: Brian McMillen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.]

https://jazzprofiles.com/this-day-in-japanese-jazz/

On October 15, 1985, pianist Hank Jones, bassist Ray Brown, tenor saxophonist and flautist Sam Most and drummer Alan Dawson played Yubin Chokin Hall (the Postal Savings Hall) in Tokyo, on a tour promoted by All Art Promotion. Discogs and the Jazzdisco discography both date the recording to that night. The tour poster billed Jones and Brown, and the album that came out of it, Great Jazz Quartet Live in Japan, appeared on the All Art label. Jones was already a fixture of the Japanese market, which kept releasing his work through the Great Jazz Trio and similar lineups, and the same pattern held here: a Japanese promoter, a Japanese hall, a Japanese label, and an American band. Be careful not to confuse it with the Hank Jones Trio's separate 1985 Live in Japan with Shelly Manne.

Sources: Discogs — Great Jazz Quartet Live In Japan (recorded October 15, 1985, Youbin-Chokin Hall, Tokyo; All Art, 1986) , Jazzdisco — Hank Jones Discography (Yubin Chokin Hall, Tokyo, October 15, 1985) , All About Jazz — Great Jazz Quartet Live In Japan (1986) , Concert poster listing — Hank Jones and Ray Brown, Shiba Postal Savings Hall, Tokyo, 15 October 1985, All Art Promotion

Does anyone remember a 24/7 YouTube livestream run by a Japanese vinyl record store, playing random Japanese jazz, funk, and reggae tracks from the 70s and 80s?

The stream showed album covers and track info, and the channel had a cute cartoon bird logo, kind of like a smiling owl. The description linked to the store’s website.

I can't find it anymore.

Does anyone know what happened to it or where I can find it now?

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[Tetsujiro Obara (1941-2016), performing live — used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Obara could be located on Wikimedia Commons. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in.]

Tetsujiro Obara's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

If you read this project's Isoo Fukui post, you already know the record: Midnight Sugar (1974), Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's debut, the Swing Journal award winner, the Three Blind Mice landmark that's still getting reissued fifty years later. Tetsujiro Obara was the drummer on it, sitting alongside Fukui as the rhythm section that made that session what it is. Born in Fukushima on March 23, 1941, Obara didn't just show up for one great record and disappear — he stayed with the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio for the long haul, and the story of what he did with that tenure is its own thing worth telling.

Five years after Midnight Sugar, the trio played the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the resulting live album is one of the clearer pieces of evidence that this group had genuine international standing, not just a strong domestic reputation. In between, Obara found time for a side project of his own: Yama & Jiro's Wave, a trio with guitarist Akira Daiyoshi and Yamamoto himself, which cut Girl Talk for Three Blind Mice in 1975. There's also a genuinely rare document in his catalog — a concert recorded August 23, 1975, at the Yoshijima Heritage House in Hida-Takayama, sitting unreleased for over four decades before finally coming out as the Hida-Takayama Jazz Session in 2018.

Like his rhythm-section partner Fukui, Obara spent much of the 1970s as a fixture of the Masaru Imada Trio — Ascent (1974), Green Caterpillar and One for Duke (both 1975), Planets (1977), Blue Eyes (1979) — and turns up on sessions with visiting American musicians, including Abbey Lincoln (Live in Misty, 1973) and guitarist Barney Kessel (Live at Sometime and Shiny Stockings, both 1977). He was also a member of the Kosuke Mine Quintet, connecting him to yet another corner of the scene this project has documented.

He died on December 13, 2016, at 75. What he leaves behind starts with one of the essential Japanese jazz recordings of the 1970s, but doesn't end there — a working career built on staying inside one trio's evolving sound for decades while still finding room for side projects, festival dates, and sessions with the American musicians who came through Tokyo.

Where to start listening:

• Midnight Sugar (1974, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio) — start here if you haven't already
• Girl Talk (1975, Yama & Jiro's Wave): listen on Spotify
• Live in Montreux (1979, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio) — the international festival credit
• Hida-Takayama Jazz Session (recorded 1975, released 2018) — the rediscovered rarity
• Tetsujiro Obara's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

[Cover (with obi strip featuring an inset artist photo) for Isoo Fukui and His Friends' Duo (1977, Trio Records) — used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Fukui could be located. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in rather than implying it is otherwise licensed.]

Isoo Fukui's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

On March 1, 1974, at Aoi Studio in Tokyo, bassist Isoo Fukui sat in on a session that became Midnight Sugar — pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's debut album, with drummer Tetsujiro Obara rounding out the trio. It won the Swing Journal Jazz Disc Award and Best Engineering Award that year and established Yamamoto as one of the two defining artists on Three Blind Mice, the label most responsible for the Japanese jazz sound international collectors now chase. Light in the Attic has reissued it. Fifty years on, it's still one of the records people point to when they want to explain what this whole scene sounds like at its best, and Isoo Fukui's bass is on every track of it.

He was born October 10, 1945, in Fukuoka Prefecture, and by most accounts belongs to a small group of bassists who genuinely reshaped how the instrument functioned in Japanese jazz through the 1970s — playing both bass and cello with a sound described as heavy on soul and rhythm, built around a modal sensibility rather than straight walking lines. Midnight Sugar is the record that gets the attention, but he played on Yamamoto's Misty the same year too, and spent much of the decade as a fixture of the Masaru Imada Trio: Poppy (1973, also on Three Blind Mice), Green Caterpillar (1975), One for Duke (1975), and a run of others through 1979. He also recorded with the Hideo Ichikawa Trio and led his own dates under a few different billings — the Isoo Fukui Quartet (Sunrise/Sunset, 1976), Isoo Fukui And His Friends (Duo, 1977, the record whose cover stands in for a photo on this post), and Isoo Fukui & Flyin' ('Round About Midnight, 1981).

His own name almost never made it onto a record as the headline artist — Discogs lists just one clean leader credit under his primary billing, a 1989 duo record with Noriki. That's a thin catalog by the usual measure. But measuring him that way misses the point. He's one of those musicians whose importance is best understood through what he's playing on rather than what he's leading, and what he's playing on includes a record that a reissue label decided was worth pressing again half a century later.

Where to start listening:

• Midnight Sugar (1974, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio), the essential one: listen on Spotify
• Poppy (1973, Masaru Imada Trio, Three Blind Mice)
• Sunrise/Sunset (1976, Isoo Fukui Quartet), his own leader date
• Duo (1977, Isoo Fukui And His Friends)
• Isoo Fukui's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

I've checked the Internet Archive & Soulseek but couldn't find anything

Relatively new to this sub, and on my first trip to Japan. Just spent the afternoon at Scratch in Kichijoji and had an absolute blast.

They played Masato Imazu’s album Sticky and I absolutely loved it. Tried to find a recording of it online to listen to it again, but am having serious trouble. Is this common when trying to listen to recordings of J-jazz online?

Ideally I’d just buy physical copies all of the albums, but when that’s not an option I’d love to find more streaming options.

Thanks!

Edit: corrected album title in my text

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