Why Japan's jazz cafes are more important than ever

0:00No, I mean it's uniquely Japanese. Obviously the music is American. I think, you know, Japan is a country that is comfortable with silence. It's not necessarily its intention, but it represents this complete diametric opposite of the kind of where we are as a culture. Always being on, always being online, always talking, always being connected. And your force is just to sit quiet and do one thing. Thanks for joining us on an packing Japan. Probably produced by our team at Zen Studio with a long standing support of Zen Group. To keep these weekly stories coming, please consider subscribing. It's the best way to support the show and really makes a difference. And now, let's get into it. Welcome to Unpacking Japan. I'm Toby and today I have the pleasure to welcome Philip Arneal. Thank you so much for coming. Your photographer, writer, your author of Tokyo Jazz Joins, a fantastic book that documents the many or few remaining jazkeys as in jazz bars.

1:07Originally in Tokyo, but also beyond. I think you've got a second one in the works, hopefully. That maybe we can talk a little bit about later. But you have a very interesting journey. You spend 20 years in Japan and came originally in 1997, at 22. Yes. If we go back to that time, what brings a 22-year-old student, I imagine, from Belfast to Japan? Well, that's a good question. There's a story I've told many times. But yeah, I mean, it's funny when I think back on it now, especially in, obviously, we're in this digital age now where there's this constant connectivity. And when I think back now, and I think the older I get, the more I think, incredible it was. Not that it was unique, but just how incredible it was that I somehow thought, yeah, I'll go to Japan. And I remember turning up, you know, and just, I knew nothing about Japan.

2:07I spoke no Japanese. And it had come about through an ex-girlfriend at university, had said to me one day, just thought off the cuff, oh, some people in my house are applying for this thing, in Japan. I was like, oh, what's that? I was interested. I had no other plans. Typical arts and humanities student. And so I applied, and it was obviously the Jetski, which at the time, you know, it had this sort of real heyday during the bubble years to kind of internationalize Japan. And I think it was sort of just the tail end of the Halcyon days of the Jepro, going like, we were flowing out business class, you know? Oh, really? It was still that kind of deal. But I applied for it and, you know, I went to the consulate in Edinburgh. And I remember, I remember distinctly coming in and sitting down, it was like a bench, you know, three or four people. And they had all these notes about Japan. I was thinking, you know, shit, like, what am I, you know? Like, this is not good.

3:10And so I thought, what am I going to do? And then I went into the interview and, you know, they asked me one of the questions. The only question I remember is like, what three places in Japan do you want to go to? I was like, okay, Tokyo. And I made up something. I thought, you know, it's very futuristic. And, you know, anyone who lives there now knows that that's maybe slightly not quite the case. But, you know, I was, it's a very futuristic city. And, you know, then I just, you know, re-ordered the letters and said, killed though, because, you know, that's obviously the traditional Japan that everyone, you know, the Japan of the imagination. And the only other places I knew were from history. So it was Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So I said, and also Nagasaki, because, you know, I'd like to see a place that has been, you know, sort of defined by its reputation worldwide for nefarious or for bad reasons, you know. And I understand that coming from Belfast, and that was going. These interviews were like, oh, very good. They were writing down these answers. They were writing down these answers.

4:11And I thought, like, this is winging it, you know, in the extreme. And I got the position. And I mean, I just, I look back now and think, you know, it was where I was meant to be. And if you believe in fate or destiny or whatever, you know, it was definitely the path my life was supposed to take. But to say there was any plan or intention, and it would be a lie, because I just stumbled into it, like so many things that in my life. And, you know, I sort of think back and wonder, like, how I'm asked that I even get to that position. But I'm very, very grateful for it. And obviously when I came to Japan, then I completely fell in love with the country. And as you said, you know, stayed 20 years, but it was just a chance conversation that Lad led to this interview. And I remember the application process being so, so obvious, because there were reams of instructions. And it was like, you know, you had to print out four times and you had to staple twice at the top right hand corner. I remember the time thinking, this is really odd. But I sort of,

5:12when I think back now, I wonder if that's not wasn't part of the shortlist thing, because I would imagine people did not follow those instructions. And then obviously come into Japan and living here, you know, you're like, that makes perfect sense. Because there's a way of doing everything. And so that's what happened. And I turned up here in the heat of a Yokohama summer. And luckily the Yokohama Kyoikuenka, they gave us, the Board of Education, gave us a one-month orientation. And I know colleagues who just were shipped off to various places around the country and certainly didn't have that. So it was kind of a softer landing, I think. But, and then, you know, from September, you're suddenly standing in front of students, 35 students. And I mean, I remember arriving at the school the first day in a place called Mutsukawa Kyoikuenka, Yokohama. Because when I wrote on my form, and those days Tokyo had gone as an option. And I was all about coming to Tokyo, you know, because I wanted to. So they didn't send you to Naka Sakin. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, to Kyoto, not to Tokyo, they just like, okay.

6:12Which would have been great, because I love both those places. But I remember, you know, you had this choice of, I think it was urban, suburban, rural. So I just circled urban. And then it said, three cities. And I literally just wrote Tokyo three times. And so they obviously were like, well, he wants to go to Tokyo, but we can't do that now. So they sent me to Yokohama, which was, you know, and I lived in the north of Yokohama after my first year. So I was pretty much, you know, on the Tokyo line, very close to Tokyo. And I turned up that first morning and just, you know, I remember very clearly coming to the shoot where the, you know, the shoe boxes are. And these three, you know, third year junior high school girls were standing there. And it's tried to say something like, you know, I'm here to be a teacher or whatever, you know, and they just looked at me and just screamed and ran off. And I was like, okay, this is my first day. I shuffled into the school. And, you know, then I spent a month, you know, going around four different schools, doing this absolutely, you know, excruciating self-introduction lesson where I talked all about myself,

7:14you know, my hobbies, what countries I'd been to all this stuff. And so many times, you know, you're just standing in front of completely, uh, on responsive class, you know, I remember bounding into San Nensei classes and saying, you know, hello, you know, I'm Philip and it was just like this, you know, like 35, 40 students. And when I think back on that, I think I don't know how I stuck it out because, you know, it's, it's kind of embarrassing. It's, I was going to ask when you, don't really have any particular idea of Japan. You don't really have any big plans to come here and make a life here. You stumble into that jet program suddenly in front of these students, on a responsive thing like, oh, my next year or two, I'm going to be doing this every day. Yep. Um, did you start questioning what you signed up for? I'm thinking, well, maybe I should do back trial and end or it was sort of, it was confusing because I loved Japan immediately. And I'd grown up in Belfast during the troubles. And I couldn't wait to leave. I'd gone to, mistakenly gone to Sinandry's in Scotland, which had nothing. I was very into music. And so I wanted clubs,

8:18I wanted record shops, you know, I wanted gigs. And they didn't, none of these things. So I ended up transferring to Glasgow. And so I think, you know, coming here was just like, you know, as we all know, it's just complete overstimulation and, you know, all those things that you want to be there. So on one hand, you've got that, but on the other hand, you've got this sort of, you know, incredibly sometimes very, very warm and generous at other times, but also very suffocating, kind of claustrophobic teachers room, you know, where I'm very grateful for that because I think three years in that environment teaches you a lot of what you need to know about Japan, how the society works. You know, it's a microcosm for the society. And I think that was very valuable. But I learned fairly quickly that I have, you know, somewhat of an ability to teach or, you know, it may be a vocation as well. So, you know, I kind of find my feet. And the probably the most difficult part was the expectations of the school. And, you know, you would work with different

9:18teachers. So you're at three or four schools a month and, you know, go to some schools where teachers would be sending you lessons and plans a week before and let's do this and let's do that. And, you know, you were really seen as a resource. And then there were other times you were quite literally like a human tape recorder. You know, you just, they said they would say, you know, read this and you would stand reading with the Irish accent. Yeah. And I was, you know, and I'm sort of quite a logical person in some ways. And it's happy like, you know, why don't you just put the tape recorder on? But again, you know, that's learning about Japan, you know, and it's like, well, that's, you know, that's, that's not the point, right? The point is that you're here and, you know, you can do this. And so at the time, the jet program, I think, was only three years. So I intended to do one, one was too short and I stayed for a second. And then I did the third and final year. And as you, as you, you know, you start to learn the ropes and a lot of it is sitting around, and this is pre-internet. So there's many days you'd come in and up on the blackboard, it would say, you know, no classes today because we have Bunkasai or we have, you know, sports day or sports practice

10:19or whatever it is. So you just be sitting there. I mean, I just sit there. You'd be sort of reading this paper, reading the Japan Times, did it on the early. And that was just, you know, that was, but it was great because, you know, you start to absorb what's going on, you start to learn how people work, you pick up, I have a good ear for languages. So you, you pick up Japanese in a way that probably you wouldn't necessarily in a school or a textbook. You said that those three years teaching at the school gave you like a great insight into how society works into this microcosm. What are some of these key things you notice and pick up from it that kind of stayed with you throughout your, your, your main time in Japan? I think like, I mean, there's things like this, I think the socialization of children, you know, is a big one. You know, I feel like as someone who went on and trained as a teacher, you know, I think in many ways, certainly some of the schools that I worked in, especially in Yokohama, were, there were rougher schools in some cases. And I think in many ways, you know, school is kind of, it's, it's, it's socializing. And then, you know,

11:22where you do the kind of academic work as a juku, you know, so there's this kind of split. And I remember thinking, you know, if all the work, if all these other things weren't happening, you know, you could do lessons. But then, you know, there's a great value, I think. And actually, as a teacher, I also realized that things that, that kids really remember are trips, are festivals, you know, are concerts. These are the things that they remember, not like how to multiply and divide fractions or whatever. Or whatever. I think they recorded it. Yeah, exactly. You know, so I think that was one thing. I think you learn about hierarchy, you learn about how, you know, these kind of relations work. I mean, one particular incident that always sticks in my mind was a teacher that I worked with in the first school. And, you know, I thought we got along, and you know, we did lessons together. I mean, she was kind of an interesting character, shall we say. But, you know, we sort of worked, I think, together well. And then my supervisor, about two weeks later called me in and said, well, there's been a complaint about you.

12:24But like, what is this, you know, and it turned out it was, I was wearing my, I was wearing Tommy Hill figure at the time, perfume or aftershave, or DeColon, you know, and it was too strong. And that was one of those moments where you're like, you know, of course, you know, I'm this sort of, you know, righteous raging sort of, you know, 22 year old, and, you know, and trying to figure out Japan and all these things. And I was just furious, you know, and then of course, I realized, you know, gradually that that's how it works, you know, because initially your instinct is, well, why do you just, you know, I thought we were friends, I thought we got on, we were colleagues, why didn't you speak to me, just tell me. But of course, you know, that's not how it works here. So, you know, that was a real lesson. And I think, you know, just other things around the work culture, you know, the sort of, you know, keeping busy or at least appearing to be busy, you know, the expectations of staying, even if you're not necessarily doing something. And there was always the cultural sense a left. And then eventually there was this sort of, you know, people relaxed more. And just all

13:24those things. And I think, you know, sometimes also I would say that one of the paradigms that kind of works a lot in Japan is this sort of what I describe as like form versus content. I think the form is more often more important, you know, the front, you know, is the form is, is takes priority over the content. So there's times you'd be doing things in your school, you know, and you'd be like, why are we doing this? And then you realize, you know, it's, it's not the end goal. It's, you're doing it for this purpose to present a certain thing. Or that's the important part, you know, I also learned about the meetings, you know, the meetings, meetings about meetings. So, you know, so I think, you know, and I, laterally I worked at international schools and, you know, with colleagues who had been recruited from overseas. And I think, you know, the way, not apart from the language, you just learn how to function in the society much more effectively, I think, because you're in that environment, you know, than coming and, you know, you're sort of working in a kind of more of a

14:27bubble or a nice little environment. And then, you know, the two, that's where I think the two really can clash. You mentioned that you immediately fell in love with Japan. What did you experience? What, what was your experience like in the late 90s when you arrived in experience, Tokyo outside of this school microcosm? I think, I just think, I mean, I think it's just completely different, right? I mean, it just couldn't have been more different than where I'd come from. I think that was one thing. You know, just the stimulation, I mean, Belfast was a stimulating place, but for different reasons. And I think, you know, many people, including myself, had relatively normal upbringing and Belfast, you know, relatively safe. And, you know, weren't not directly touched by the troubles and things like that. But, you know, in my mind, at least it was sort of a, it was a suffocating place, you know, than use every day was the same thing. And as a result, you know, I think there was just this

15:29suppression of culture, you know, the city center was busy during the day time. But then at night, it was just like, you know, there's a ring of steel around Belfast, the centers, it was just a dead zone. And, you know, I think, you know, I saw many bands, you know, in the universities, but also many didn't come. And, you know, there was just this kind of like avoidance of it, generally speaking, there wasn't a lot of tourists and things like that. And then you come here and it's just like, you know, completely overstimulating. And just everything, I think, the choice of everything, you know, I'm someone who always wants to live within like two, three minutes of being able to go and get a coffee or go and get a, um, those days newspaper or whatever it is. And, you know, the convenience of everything here and the way that everything works and sort of intersects in a seamless way. Like I've spent the last 10 days traveling around Japan, like huge distances and, you know, those two, three minute connections. And even if you have that, you can still just pop into the, he asked on the platform and get yourself some food and, you know,

16:34all these kind of things. So I think for me that, and also just the music, you know, the record shop side, like I was a big hip hop fan at the time. And, you know, and I'd been to New York to buy records. And then, you know, you go to Shibuya and Manhattan Records and it's just these walls of like 12 inches, you know, which you just weren't able to get. Even in Glasgow, you know, you got, there were sort of ribs and drabs of them, but not like, you know, walls of them. So I was just ready for it, I think, you know, and yeah, I just, like it, you know, I think it does take its toll on you, Japan. I think, no matter what people say, I think it does have either a physical or mental toll on you, because I think you have to process an absorb a lot of them. But in that first flurry, at least of that, you know, this first few months, I was just like, this place. Long days at school, yeah, evenings in bars and clubs, listening to bands, buying and enjoying records. Yeah. You were on that program, the jet program for three years. Yeah. You came without a plan. At what

17:36point did you start thinking like, okay, what am I going to be doing here if I want to stay? And, what made you stay beyond that program in the end? I mean, a lot of my life, I would say, has been planless. I mean, I'm very proactive and I'm always looking for opportunities. But in terms of having this, you know, I've never had this master plan. If I want to do this, and I would sort of say sometimes, even now, I'm not quite sure exactly what it is I'm doing. And even, you know, I hate that question. I'm like, what do you do? Because I'm like, well, you know, and then you have to sort of caveat everything. And you know, into box. Yeah. And I sort of envy those people just couldn't say, I'm a dentist. You know, I was like, yeah, got it. Okay. No, I know what you do. But I think for me, the priority initially was, was, was just to get a visa. So the visa ran out. And I had, I basically found a place. I think it was called the Study Abroad Library or something in Geogalcon. I'd spent a fair bit of time in Geogalcon in Tokyo in the first year. It was a good friend of mine. I'd

18:37lived there in American guy who had subsequently gone home. So I had this connection with Geogalcon area. So I found the Study Abroad Library and it was literally this woman who I think, you know, the money was not an issue, shall we say. And so she'd opened up this again, sort of early days of the internet. So she'd opened up this library where she ran English language classes, but also had all these brochures and catalogs from universities around the world. So it was a place you could go learn English. You could also then go and get like consult, you know, consult with her about if you want to study abroad and figure out what was best. And thanks to their kindness and generosity. And she gave me a job doing some teaching and I managed to secure a visa through that. And then I just kind of continued to teach. And I moved into, I worked in an international kindergarten for a few years, like teaching, I mean, it was all kids, you know, changing nappies and all these things as well and feeding and all this stuff during the day. And then eventually

19:40I got into kind of international school teaching and actually trained remotely through University of New UK, got my P.D.C. And the latter half of my time here, I worked at a big British International school in Tokyo. What point in that journey did photography come into? Well photography was always there. In fact, the same person I met, the same ex-girlfriend who had said her friend was applying for this thing in Japan. I met her recently and she reminded me also that she had been the one to encourage me to get into, you know, to photograph. So I'd started like playing around with with a camera in university. And then I do remember bringing a camera here and getting more seriously into it, while I say seriously, I used to go out after school every day around Yokohama and I used to just shoot a roller film. And there was still cheap. Yeah, when it was still cheap, yeah, I wasn't, it wasn't really cost. I'm sort of glad in a way because it had

20:44been digital, you know, I think there's less discipline in some ways in digital photography. So I shot this film, I would develop it. And the idea was to kind of figure out really what what I was interested in photographing. It's funny, I still have some of those photos and I look back and I realized like even after all this time, you know, that kind of what drew my eye and what I'm interested in is still the same thing. Technically, I hope at least the photos are better, but you know, it's definitely certain things that appealed to me. You said earlier that Tokyo is overwhelming, overstimulating. So in this kind of visual and sensory chaos, what did catch your eyes attention? Yeah, I like, I mean, I like the urban, I like shadows, I like sort of incongruity. I think it's one of the things I really like, so things that sort of are out of place in the environment are definitely things that appealed to me. And I think there's a beauty in the sort of banal in the in the in the mundane that you see a lot in the city, you know,

21:49I think that goes on notice. So I think those are the things that kind of appealed to me. And then I there's a guy who'd been here a long time called Andy Barker, he was based down in Kamakura. And he was running these classes. And so I did, I remember doing one of these classes, made a couple of good friends on them. We did a little sort of exhibition at a restaurant, which the name escapes me up in Aoyama. And then from there, I think I just kind of continued to kind of play around. I mean, I wasn't I tend to work and sort of burst. So I didn't sustain this. I should have done in hindsight, but you know, I would do a project and then leave it for a bit. And you know, but that was kind of where I got into it. And then I've just continued to do so. And naturally have been drawn quite often too, hard for my environment to like musical subcultures and that kind of stuff. One of the places that you were drawn to and so I'm photographing a lot is Bebobs Square. Yes. Tell me a little bit about this. You can't remember that though. You tell me.

22:50You're much too young for Bebobs Square. Yeah, Bebobs Square was like, I mean, in my mind, it was kind of a legendary place, you know, like I remember very just so at university, I had been involved with this club called Blueprint, which was at a club called the volcano in Glasgow. And it's immortalized in the film Train Spawning, which ironically, of course, is set in Edinburgh, but they used the volcano and it was very distinctive because along the top, it has these neon letters that said volcano. So anyone from Scotland would immediately recognize it. And so I've gotten kind of at the time of like Asagas and sort of, you know, like Soul Jazz and this kind of stuff, you know, people like Jaws Peterson and Paul Bradshaw and all these people were, you know, playing in clubs and things and in London particularly. And we did this event in Glasgow and so I sort of got into that music and I mean through hip hop as well, you know, because it's all connected and you know, the samples and you start to dig deeper into the records and stuff like that.

23:51And when I came to, when I was in Japan when I just wandered into this club in Ouyama, it was called Fy, I think it's gone now, but it was just off Ouyama Dori in Tokyo and I was like, oh my god, like this is this is Blueprint, this is this is what I've been looking for. And just by chance, this very famous UK musician called Snowboy happened to be over there on tour and he was like, oh, have you met Lincoln? And Lincoln was a guy, he's an English guy that was working for Tony and guys, a hair stylist and he introduced me to Lincoln and Lincoln was running this club and he brought Snowboy over and it was playing, you know, it was like dark, it was like heavy funk and Latin, really heavy jazz, like almost undanceable, but there's this whole scene in the UK that had grown up in Manchester and London, you know, UK dance style, they call it like bebop dance, they call it bebop dance in Japan, but it's like UK jazz dance and some intrepid Japanese dancers, of course, had gone to the UK, brought this back to Japan and there was this scene in Tokyo and it was sort

24:56of centered on bebop square, you know, really fast dance, it's sort of like a mixture of tap and ballet and like incredibly fast and I was like just wow, you know, so I started to photograph that with a very not a great camera in the dark with no flash, got kicked a few times, etc. Oh, did you photograph this because there was still on film in dark places with great difficulty. I sort of used flash and I still have some of the photos now on negatives and they look okay, but I mean, you know, it was really hard, I mean, you can capture a lot of the movement and that sort of thing, but you know, I have those photos and it's a real record and one of the dancers said to me, you know, from one of the groups that for them that those photos and that kind of bebop square, those nights are their equivalent of the electric ballroom, which is this sort of legendary London venue where a lot of UK jazz dance happened in the UK and you know, I was a real compliment

25:57and I'm so glad that I got to do that. I mean, I started to photograph bebop square and then eventually I got to know the dancers and I finished that kind of project with series of portraits of them. So I took them out to over by Komasawa where the Olympic stadium was, put them against a wall, put on some music and I said, dance, you know, so they weren't posed, they look kind of posed the photos in some ways, but they were just dancing and I just photographed and and the idea of that project was to capture because actually what had happened there was like about three generations by this point of these dancers who'd come through and again, you know, to me that was, you know, you asked earlier about what you loved about Japan. I mean, that's another thing, right, this obsessive culture of taking something and like really just going for it, you know, and this is like a little niche scene that had existed in London at a period in time and yet it had been brought to Japan and continued to exist and continued to evolve and didn't really exist anywhere in the world apart from Harry. For you kind of getting this intimate access to meet the dancers,

27:01photograph, document and capture this and photograph because it's gone now. How did you perceive the scene and interacting with the people of why they took this from London, why did they get so interested, why three generations of people are performing and developing and evolving this niche dance style, music style. I mean, the access I think you have to earn, you know, I did a master's in documentary photography and one of the things I remember is the course director talking about negotiated access being the key, you know, that really has stuck with me, you know, because I'm not a, I'm not really, I'm a street photographer in the sense I photograph streets but I'm not a street photographer, I don't generally capture candid moments and you know that kind of thing, it's not my style. And so I think, you know, with bebop Square and these other events, I mean, some of the, a lot of the scenes still continuing actually now, so there's probably other generations

28:03that have come through, or at least one generation has come through and the original guys, Suncream Steppers were kind of the, I mean they must be in their 60s, late 60s now, I mean, you know, and these guys are still probably doing bits and pieces of dancing, so, but I think like you just get known, right? I mean, you know, there probably wasn't many non-Japanese there as well, so you kind of stick out a bit, you're also crawling about the floor or the camera, and then of course when people see some of the photos, you know, they're like, oh, you know, you're, you know, you're, you're here for the right reasons. And also actually, you know, I was there as a customer, like I love the music, you know, it wasn't a kind of, oh, this is a cool thing to photograph, you know, and we live in a time now where like a lot of it's about, you know, just get this quickly and get it up and, you know, share it for content, but, you know, I was there because I love that music, and then, you know, the photograph in the dancers was a bonus, and so I think through that you get this kind of access, and I don't know, I mean, there's people who are better at

29:04articulating, you know, Japanese-ness than me probably, but I think, you know, one of the features of this country is just this obsessive interest taken to like the Instagram, you know, that some of the people that you met explain why they were so obsessed or why they kind of, their life revolved around this. I think a lot of them had just found what they want, what they loved, you know, so they, some of them had gone to London, you know, and seen it in clubs, some of, sometimes they've been some of the London dancers, there was people like, IDJ, which I danced jazz, Eparilus, who's still, you know, quite active in London, and, you know, they had come here and, like, done lessons or done events or done nights, and I think it's just that moment, you know, where you're like, this is, this is what I've been looking for, this is what I wanted to do, you know, and it was kind of interesting to see some of these dancers, you know, they, some drift away, some are still there, some get married, they have kids, they continue, and there's always this kind

30:06of hardcore nucleus, and I think it's just, you know, it's like anything you get into one thing, and you just find what you feel like you should be doing, but I think in Japan, you know, they, people take it just to that extra degree, just that dedication and commitment to it is, I think it's just unrivaled, you know, some of that. You explain that you often work in verse, you'll start a project, let it rest a little bit, get back to it, or maybe start something else, that project, the the V-Whip Square, something you kind of saw through, from documenting the scene in the club, from that photo shoot at the stadium with the dancers. Yeah, what did that project mean to you personally, with your kind of work as a documentary photographer at the time in Japan? I think probably it was the first, I think it was probably the first kind of major project that I did, you know, like in terms of it was sustained, it kind of evolved, and it was this document, it was this record of a scene, and you know, the portraits were an attempt, like I was conscious

31:10that it's very much a club culture, so I wanted to photograph in the clubs, but also I wanted through those portraits to kind of document at a moment, I mean all photographs are a moment time, but to document these generations, you know, this is what's happening in before, some move on, some are unable to dance, others drift away, you know, some have kids and they can't do it again, you know, can't do it for a period of time, whatever it might be, and I think for me that was that was probably looking back like the first major project, and also actually I used those photos then subsequently to apply for my masters, which again, you know, I'm very grateful for it, because it was something that looked like a unique and distinct body of work, you know, rather than a sort of smattering of ideas, or you know, just Japan photos and things like that, so it was useful from that point of view as well, you know. That kind of happened organically through your interest in the music scene, and then your interest in photography and your

32:11combine both, but having finished that body of work motivates you to seek out specific projects after and to be more intentional about documenting other venues, other music scenes, or kind of where did they sleep to? I mean, like my own impression of my life is generally stumbling into things, and falling into things, and things happening, like I said, I'm always sort of putting stuff out there, and I feel like if you do that, things come back, but I think it probably did focus me, in fact, I actually started, I did an exhibition in a gallery, I think it's also no longer there, in Shimokitazawa, and that was kind of drew a line, actually some of the dancers, two of the soundcreams, steppers came that were in the photos, and they danced at the opening in front of their photo, and I mean, it was just, I was like, and Lincoln, who I mentioned earlier, that, you know, was kind of helping fuel the scene with these events, he was DJ, and it's just, you know, I was like, this is great, and you know, I think again, like galleries are galleries, and galleries are fine,

33:14but you know, when your music is, when your work is intimately linked to music, to have it in that context is also really important, I think, you know, to kind of bring it to life, so it was a great moment in that sense, and then actually by this sort of time, my own taste in jazz had moved towards swing, and kind of big band, and that sort of 30s, 40s, and also my fashion at the time, I was wearing three-piece suits, and you know, typins, and two-tone shoes, and so I'd gotten into that kind of style of music, and through that, you know, there was a connection or kind of a like a vend diagram with some of the rockabilly culture, which again, you know, another very hard course scene inspired by foreign culture, but I started to photograph them as part of another project for my masters actually, and then that was the point when the earthquake happened, and it just felt a bit weird to be sort of taking portraits of rockabilly while this was all

34:17going on, I mean, it was a very strange time, you know, and I thought this feels weird, so I actually flipped the whole project, I spoke to my supervisor at the time, flipped the whole thing, and I kind of, the thing that I created in the end starts with these rockabilly portraits, and then there's this kind of cut where the earthquake happens, and actually then what I did was went once the roads reopened from Tokyo, I went north twice and volunteered with part of the cleanup operation, and just in my time, just in my break times only, I documented that experience, and I kind of turned that into the thing, so it went from these rockabilly, I only got two down actually, these two rockabilly portraits in Shimukitazawa, to, you know, snow covered tent, and this kind of much more, I think auto-ethnographic kind of approach, which is actually something I've continued with that or work, where, you know, you're putting your own subjectivity into, you know,

35:23getting into whole photographic discussion, but you know, some people sort of, there's that idea that you should be standing back and you're just documenting what's there, but my approach to a lot of work is very much that you're necessarily in there as a photographer, and you can't really be removed, and so leaning into that subjectivity, and I think that was the first time probably that I done something like that, where it was, you know, I took some sound recording, I photographed my own things as well as what was happening around me, and turned this into kind of a project for my masters, and so I think a lot of things came from the whole Tokyu B-Bop kind of project, you know, and the different elements of that, and I'm just talking to you about it now that I can see those three lines actually, it's interesting, yeah. And those three lines eventually took you to Jasbury That's correct, Jas, you've done your research, yeah. It did, yeah, it took me to, well, I was in Hello Dolly in 2014, which is still there, it's down one of these, you know, beautiful Kyoto kind of

36:25alleyways, you know, in Gion, around the area. And I don't like remember exactly, but I just remember, you know, it's, Hello Dolly, it looks out on the river, there's a portrait of the disegalaspi, it's kind of red velvet, and you know, these brown, you know, wooden from Hoganie cabinets, it's all very kind of rarefied, and I remember just thinking to myself, you know, these places won't be here forever, you know, it feels like these are places that feel like it's sort of some degree trapped in time. I wonder if I should photograph them. And that led me to back actually to the Tokyo bebop, the exhibition, which is called Tokyo Jas document, I think the name of the exhibition, because at that time, a guy, a music writer and broadcaster called James Couchball had come to the exhibition. And I remember it very clearly, because I'd met him a couple of times at events, he had a small child in his arm, and he says,

37:26oh, sorry, I can't stay long, but you know, great work, and I have to go. And I knew that he had the time he had a cycle to Tokyo Jas site, which was kind of a listing site for bars, cafes, this is again, pre-social media. So, you know, it was basically, you turn up in Japan, you're like, I want to listen to soul music, I'd love to go to Jas Bar, you go there, you find hopefully opening ours, phone number if you can speak Japanese or someone can, and then a little pressy of the bar, you know, like what's the vibe, or what music do you hear? But I contacted him and said, look, I've got this idea for projects, and I was thinking, you know, he can probably tap me in quicker, he knows what places maybe are at risk of closure, etc., etc. So we had this meeting in JBL and on 246, it just outside Shibuya station, and I kind of pitched this idea to him. Now, in the retelling of it, he would say that he was very excited about the project,

38:29but I distinctly remember walking home thinking, huh, right, there might be a little more excitement. But I pushed, I pushed on, and I dug out, it's been 10 years now, or over 10 years, like 10 years anniversary, I dug out these emails, the initial kind of planning, let's go here, let's go here, it got pushed a couple of times. Anyway, we started in March 2015, we went to a place called Pizekanthropus erectus, which is a famous Charles Mingus album, and it's Chokuritsanjin in Japanese, down in Kamata, like very unlikely place, you know, sort of quite grimy, kind of neighborhood, next to the tracks, and when we got there, the shutter was down. You know, I didn't know James at the time, like we've become very good friends now, but you know, so we're both standing outside here, and I'm like, oh, it's going to work, and like what do we do? We went for some yakitori, we came back, the shutter was out, and that was really what began this kind of project that's now been going for, well, it'll be 12 years next year, you know, so, and I went in, photographed,

39:36didn't really know what I was doing at the time, I wasn't quite sure where it was headed, but I was going to ask, did you have an idea of how you wanted to document the place, because these jazz bars, jazz quesas, I imagine are dark, relatively small, I was very private spaces, that people go to keep their privacy. How did you approach that first bar owner or master when you kind of walked in there, and I, hey, we have these two foreigners, we want to take photos? Well, I mean, this is where I'm eternally grateful to James, because, you know, he knew some of the owners, he'd been going, I mean, James, I mean, if you go to social media now, every other post, certainly on my feed as jazz quesas, jazz bar, and it's really become a thing, James has been doing this, you know, for many years, he came, I think, in 97, same year that I came, so nearly 30 years now, he's been going around these music bars, so he knew some of these owners, so I'm so grateful to him, because a lot of the early places we'd called, you know, he'd called

40:36said, look, you know, we're going to come around, this guy wants to take some pictures, so there was already that kind of in, I think, you know, we both speak Japanese, so that also makes it much easier, or certainly did then, but I didn't really know, honestly, I just started to photograph, and I just kind of photograph what I saw, I knew that I didn't want to make it like, you know, kind of shoes, I like, you know, I didn't want, uh, tripods, I didn't want, um, you know, uh, flash or anything like that, I wanted to try and capture what I find as much as you come with the camera, so that was the approach, and I think the methodology has evolved over the period of the years, I mean, I think on this trip, I will take me up to 300 places that I've photographed, so the methodology kind of evolved quite quickly, and I think first and foremost, we go as customers, you know, um, we both love jazz, we both love Japan, we both love jazz, Kisa and jazz bars, so we go, there's a journey sometimes, and it's increasingly, you know,

41:42it started in Tokyo, the project is called Tokyo Jazz Drinks, and that's kind of the identity of the project, but very quickly it expanded beyond Tokyo, Yokohama, Chiba, and further and further, and further, and I think most of the country now have visited, you know, and photographed somewhere in most parts of the country, but the, you know, we go in, we have a chat, order a drink, get the lia the land, um, and then eventually, you know, I will say, or quite often the conversation will turn to, particularly in fact, as you go further and feel like, why are you here? Did you come here about accident? Do you live here? Uh, you know, and then that gives you the opportunity to say, well, actually, this is what, you know, this is what I'm doing, and, and, and then the, these, they would be okay to take some photos, and I think almost without exception, maybe one place where, where the owner's stuck his tongue out at me, um, with only that one exception, you know, I've never been refused, uh, so you said that you didn't want to, kind of stylize anything,

42:44pose anything, no flash, no tripods, uh, you just wanted to document what you found there. Yeah, what is it that you found in those? I mean, I think there's a kind of a topology, um, that exists, which is probably one of the things that's been taken outside of Japan, you know, and has become to represent this culture at large, but generally speaking, a huge amounts of music on vinyl, in some cases, CDs, or, or CDs, or, or, or things that have been digitized, so, you know, a huge catalog on a computer, but generally speaking, still vinyl, very high-end audio equipment, you know, speakers that are, in some cases, handmade, you know, tailor-made, bespoke, have been tweaked in a bespoke way, uh, very powerful with obviously amps, often valve amps, record player, and then you also have a master who is more often than not living this kind of almost,

43:51I think, like pseudo-religious life, you know, this pursuit of not an end, but just the daily routine of running this place and, and it's done for love of the music, you know, it's done for this passion and love of jazz culture in many cases. Um, and then you have, you know, a variation in, in, the type of space, but I mean, the ones that really are, in some ways, the most mind-blowing, and that are probably closest to my heart are places like Pitha Canthropus, so you have, you know, cobwebs, you have cigarette smoke for, of 40 years on the roof. You have old, uh, you know, crumpled ticket stubs and posters on the walls in the bathroom, and what you also find in many of them is just incredible jazz memorabilia. I mean, these places are like unofficial museums, you know, they have, uh, photographs of the owners with jazz legends, you know, they're heroes who, when the, who many of whom came to Japan,

44:52traveled all around the country, met these people, came and hung out in their bar or their Kisa, signed albums, signed photographs, uh, there's a tambourine in, in a place, um, in Tokyo that's signed by Miles Davis, just hanging above the, the cash register. So, you know, every place is actually very different. I mean, it never gets boring. You never think, oh, well, this is, I mean, some places resemble others, but every place is unique, and I think that's brought by the location and it's also brought by the, the kind of idiosyncrasies of the owner, but they share these common features too, and that's what makes them so fascinating. Is this a sort of concept that originated and developed in Japan, or is this something that was also imported from overseas and someone has seen a jazz Kisa equivalent somewhere in, in London or New York and decided to like, okay, I want to do something like that in Japan. No, I mean, it's uniquely Japanese, and I think that's, uh, I mean, obviously the music is American, predominantly, or certainly the, the introduction of jazz to Japan was, was,

45:56American, and particularly after the war, obviously, during the sort of occupation years from 45 to 52, but, you know, I think there was an economic imperative for a lot of these places, you know, some of the owners actually on this trip have mentioned it, you know, a couple have said to me, oh, you know, there was no way to go to gigs, there was no way to afford this or afford that, but, you know, essentially, you couldn't afford, most people couldn't afford it by records if they were available, they couldn't afford high-fi equipment for, for the home. And so, you know, these cafes, they, they, they were kind of a social, they, they performed a social function, you know, you go there, you pay your couple of hundred yen for your coffee, if you're lucky, you get to request a, a side or a b side of a record, and that's how you heard music, you know, that was the streaming of the day, if you like, you know, you went there, you sat and listened, you know, a lot of Japanese jazz musicians learned their trade there, they learned

46:58styles, they learned about different musicians, and a lot of the masters had this kind of almost educational role, you know, that what they played was defined by their tastes, it was defined by, you know, whatever genre they were particularly into, and so they are unique, and, and, you know, there was different sort of iterations, you know, the kind of classic key, so it was very like originally, I think, was writing, you know, no alcohol, it was only coffee, and so there's been this evolution over the years, as tastes have changed, as jazz has changed, as owners have got older, but like the concept of this key set, and I think personally, as someone who's lived here for a long time, you know, Japan is a country that is comfortable with silence, and one of the defining features of these places is, and some owners will dispute this, or I will say that they actually don't like that, but, you know, fundamentally it's a place where the music is central, and traditionally a lot of places, and there's some, many like that today, I mean, Jam Jam and Kobay's

47:58a good example, where all the, that you go in, and there's a conversation seat here, and there's a listening seats here, and in the listening section, all the furniture is arranged towards the speakers, so you have this kind of almost like church temple-like orientation, so the music is central, and the idea of that place is to go in and listen to music, it's not about, you know, rowdy sort of nights out, it's not a great place for a date, unless the date's going badly, you know, it's a place to be quiet, it's a place to focus on the music, and a place to enjoy jazz, and I think, you know, that's why it's so successful in Japan, and why it's been such a culture, and it has, you know, inevitably the owners are much older now, I mean, there's new places opening, and there's some places being taken over by customers or family members, but ultimately, majority of these owners are now, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s, some in their 90s, in some cases, so over the kind of heyday of

48:59the 60s and 70s, you know, there's been this decrease over time in the number of these places across Japan. You earlier described a little bit what they all have in common with equipment, and you can find records, and the kind of general atmosphere. Do they all tend to have a unique category of music that they focus on more, or do they all have a wide range of jazz records, regardless of where you go? It really depends, I mean, you can tell sometimes by the names, where the owners, sort of loyalty lies, so you've got Mingus, you've got milestones, you've got Kultrain, Kultrain, so they're named often for the artist or the musician that the owner particularly likes. Some of them you tend to get the classic kind of the sort of jazz era of the imagination, you know, the 50s, 60s, blue note, and that kind of classic era. I think when Fusion Jazz sort of came about, and Jazz went electric, that lost a lot of people, so sometimes in places you get

50:00the sense that time kind of stopped about in 1969, but then there's other places like Eagle, for example, or Masako and Shimagazawa, where you could be sitting there and listening to a record that came out last year. There's other places like Kandi in Chiba, which is run by Hayashi-san, who's been buying records since she was 16 in Shinjuku, and I think she probably, and I'm sure late 60s, early 70s at the stage, you know, where maybe it's more free jazz. So it really depends, you know, and in my experience going around so many, it can be a mix bag, you know, we were in a place the other night in Kobe where the owner's all about Soul Jazz, he wants to keep it funky, he's not interested in this kind of, you know, the sort of cerebral jazz, you know, he wants to do it. So it's always different, and you never quite know what you're going to get equally someplace as you go, and it's really become almost like a background music kind of

51:04scenario, you know, maybe. How would you describe the listening experience in those bars? You said some of them have specific listening corners, and they all have very high-end sometimes custom high-five equipment. For people that have maybe never been, how do they imagine what it's like to listen to the music compared to how music is usually consumed nowadays. I mean, I think it's I think it's something we should all do. You know, I think there's something radical now about listening because we don't listen, we don't listen to each other, we don't really listen to things that we listen to. You know, we're doing something else while we have a podcast on. We watch TV while we're looking at our phones. And you know, the state of the world, I would say suggests that, you know, we're not really listening to each other either. So I think there's something radical about listening, and I think also in the culture now there is a desire to have a concentrated focused experience,

52:08because I think we've lost that, you know, even if you go to the cinema now, people are on their phones. There's several articles recently about theaters, even which was sort of I felt like was the last bastion of, you know, quiet, dark spaces where you're focused on one thing. I was reading about some an actress talking about someone getting a laptop to do emails during a theatre performance. So, and I think the interest now more widely in analog culture, the revival of vinyl of LPs, the interest renewed interest in high-fi culture, even in flip phones and all these kind of things, I think represents a kind of a digital fatigue. And that's why I think partly, at least, you know, the culture of jazz, Kisa, and you know, listening spaces, you know, there's other types of ongaku Kisa, but you know, I think that's why people are so interested in that, because it presents something that you don't do anymore. So, I've been running these events in Belfast inspired by

53:09my experiences, where I tell some stories, and I've curated some tracks, you know, and at certain points in the evening, I'll play this track, and people are asked to switch their phones off, asked very clearly not to talk. The lights go down, and we just listen to music, and you know, you have this individual experience, you also have the shared experience, and it's fascinating, because there's people who are not necessarily into jazz that are like, I really enjoyed that, you know, and I think it's partly that slowing down and just stopping, which is something that we just don't do anymore. So, to go into like a jazz piece, and also some of the old places, you know, it's just all about the music, the volume too. So, you go in and you're just, it's just washes over you, you know, so the idea that you would do anything other than this, and quite often, it's not really an option anyway, but I think it's exhilarating, because I think it just allows you, and I know Japan is still not necessarily the case, but certainly at home in Ireland, when you go out now, just constantly people are having video calls, they're doing voice notes,

54:15it's just constant noise, constant connectivity, and so I think, you know, the jazz keys are just represents in some way, that's not necessarily its intention, but it represents this complete diametric opposite of the kind of where we are as a culture in terms of just always being on, always being online, always talking, always being connected, and you're forced in many cases with the volume, but also you're encouraged just to sit, be quiet, and do one thing, you know. What are some of the interesting conversations you've had with those masters over the years that kind of really stuck with you, was how they view society, the change in the musical scene, or just things that kind of really resonated with you when you had the opportunity to get those unique conversations? Yeah, I mean, so many, it's kind of impossible, I mean, you come out, some of the things they tell you, I mean, during COVID, it had been five years to the day that

55:19we'd started the project, you know, I first met James down in Kamata, and so I decided from my COVID room in Dublin, where I, you know, we were only allowed to go two kilometers at the time. To record a podcast or like record a, you know, a chat about the project, the mark this. And he was in Yokohama, so we did this remotely, very rudimentary sort of using, it wasn't Zoom, but something like Zoom, I kind of remember what it was called, and people listened to it, which was kind of amazing, and it's developed, I mean, it's over a hundred episodes now, and that brought a new dimension to the project, because I'm a photographer obviously, but, but by sort of producing that podcast, it allowed us to also share a lot of these stories, because I think that's another whole dimension to it, you know, you can't obviously represent it in a photograph. But I think, you know, a lot of these people, these masters and owners, they met their heroes,

56:19I mean, that's one thing, you know, they say never meet your heroes, but some of these people did, you know, and they became very good friends, you know, I mean, Basie, which is one of the legendary Kisa, up in Ichino Seki and Tohoku, there's pictures in there when you go of the owners, to go out as I'm pushing Count Basie around Japan and the wheelchair, you know, you go to Ray Brown, which is very close to Basie actually, when you come in in front of the speakers, there's a picture of Ray Brown as a American jazz bassist and his wife, and the owner and his wife, and Ray Brown and his wife were best man at Ray Brown was best man at the owner's wedding. So, so that's one thing, I think it's not necessarily what they explicitly say, because I think a lot of owners are just doing what they're doing because they love it, but I think they represent this passion and dedication to one thing, and it's not for likes or clicks or even in many cases

57:24certainly from my own evidence of my own eyes, from money, you know, they're not, this is not a business that's gonna ever make you rich, you know, many kids don't want to take these places over because, you know, you're not gonna make any money. So they're just doing it for the love, you know, I mean, okay, yes, of course they're making money, I'm not being naive, but you know, and they're charging for coffee is everything else, but they've just been doing, and we went to a place actually two days ago in Osaka called Pit In, which the owner's been there for 53 years, I mean, there's tiny place with six seats, and you know, you know that you're not the main character of the story because when you leave, he'll still be there, and he will sit there till 10 p.m. customers are not listening to music, you know, and I just think there's something about that dedication and passion and that love, genuine love for jazz music and jazz culture that I think we can all probably learn from. I think more recently, and you know, Tokyo jazz

58:28joints is perhaps contributed to this, I mean, sometimes now when you go in, owners will have either the English book or the Japanese book. Some of them will know if you say I'm doing that, this hell isn't that thing, it's been in a couple of Japanese jazz, magazines and things like that, but so they're conscious also, you know, that what they're doing now is there's an interest in an outside Japan, and they have a lot of customers, or increasing number of customers, in more obscure places, you know, that they maybe wouldn't have had five, ten years ago, so that's kind of been an interesting development as well, and I think there's a pride there, you know, sometimes they will say, yeah, this is uniquely Japanese culture, and I feel like that's something, at least anecdotally, I feel like that's not a thing that we heard ten years ago, but you know, because often James is from New York, so you know, people say, oh, you're American, oh, you must have loads of places like this in America, and he was like, nope, we don't have any, just here in Japan. And so they're like,

59:30oh, you're sort of sort of this guy, and I think now quite often, you know, you hear this kind of like doku doku, nihono, bunker, you know, this is the only Japanese culture, it's a uniquely Japanese culture, and I think that's interesting, you know, you mentioned that, including this trip, you've now documented like a closer 300 places, but a lot of the owners are getting old, nobody's there to take over most of them, how many of the places that you're documented to have already closed, do you have an idea? I don't have a rough number, but even in the first book, I think there's probably at least six or seven that are gone. Some go quickly, some, you know, we hear about some you get through the grapevine, the Twitter, whatever, but we're social media now, you also talked about the renewal interest on high-fi equipment, and I have my feed as well with a lot of high-fi and jazz and such, and also these jazkeys as becoming very popular, does it attract a lot more overseas customers and like a renewed growing interest in the field? I think so, yeah, I mean, I think,

1:00:33you know, Tukurjaz joints has the audience for the project has grown. There's another Japanese photographer called Kusunosei-san, who does these kind of booklets called Jazkisa. They're very popular, you see them in different shops around the world, and he's done great work in documenting a lot of places, and also the history of a lot of places and things like that as well. So I think that has really driven the interest, there's been a revival, say revival, there's been a growth in the interest of Japanese jazz, there's been a lot of compilations, like the BBJ jazz compilations, which happily I was able to also hold a use of my photographs for the cover art, and so that's going hand-in-hand with the audio boom. So I think there's definitely been an increase, you know, I mean, there's places that we sometimes people will contact me or contact James, and you know, they'll go to, there's a particular place I'm thinking of up in a Sahikawa, for example, called Abba Rui up in Hokkaido, about an hour from Sapporo, you know, and a guy called Marin from the Netherlands, I think he

1:01:36came here on this honeymoon with his partner and dragged her to Abba Rui in a Sahikawa, which, you know, as we all know, perhaps wouldn't be the first choice for honeymoon in Japan. So I think there is definitely that increased interest. I mean, it also presents somewhat of a paradox, perhaps, because I am conscious that the more known something becomes, the more danger, perhaps that the unique nature and the environment of it gets diminished. I mean, if you go to somewhere like Doug, which is a legendary place in Shinjuku, which actually is closing at the end of the month, you know, it's almost entirely non-Japanese, quite often tourists, and you know, there's certain places I think like that where you can maybe go and tick off your jazz kisa experience, and then you have people who are going a lot deeper. And I think that's got to be a good thing, right? Because it shows the owners that the interest there, you know, it's bringing, albeit not maybe not a huge amount, but it's bringing some revenue as well. What does it mean to you to kind of have pursued this

1:02:37documentary project for now over a decade and kind of really gone through like hundreds of those places exchanged, captured these moments, put them together in a book that is published and been sold worldwide, and also translated into Japanese. As a documentary photographer, kind of seeing this project through and still developing it, but does it represent for you? We're making me quite teary. I think it's like in the essay in the English book where actually it's translated in Japanese, it just, I just describe it as a love story, you know. I think it's something that started and gathered momentum. It was never about a book, it was never about a podcast. I think it was just, you know, I'm quite obsessive person in some ways. So it was kind of, you get to 10, I love lists as well. So, you know, I started and you kind of do 10 places and then, oh, that's 20, and then it's 50, and you kind of have these milestones.

1:03:40But it's also not about collecting them because, you know, I think from me, that would be pointless. I mean, we never parachute in and just go, it's about the journey often. Sometimes the places are hard to find. You know, we've taken, sometimes I go on my own, often with James, but, you know, increasingly as we go for other field, we've been on planes, we've been on boats, we've been on buses, trains. And so, you know, I think there's a pursuit element of it. There's a kind of a discovery element to it. So I think that's an important part of the whole project, but also going and enjoying these places. And I think for me, it is a love story because, you know, it represents all the things that are important to me. It's got photography, it's got jazz, music, it's got Japan, and travel. And, you know, I think for me, all those things

1:04:40are so important and it's brought them all together in a way that I never really imagined. And actually, also, and anyone who listens to podcasts will know, despite the abuse that I give him, James and I have become, you know, the best of friends. I think he described it to me a while back, it's one of the best things I've ever done. You know, and that meant a lot to me because, you know, I think in an era of influencers and social media, you know, James was pining the pavements in the way that only he can. I was only aware New Yorker can stomp around Japan from 1997, you know, and I feel like if there was no social media and there was no Togu jazz joints and there was none of these things, he would still be doing that. And I think, you know, it's just brought me so many things, it's gone into other areas like the listening events, I've written some academic articles. So it's just evolved in a way that I never imagined it would. And I'm, will be eternally

1:05:40grateful for not only the project, but the support that people have shown around the world, you know, the first book was crowdfunded. I'm hopeful there's going to be a second book next year, which will not be crowdfunded, which is a great achievement. And to have a Japanese book was a full circle moment, you know, I sat last year with my publisher, Sagan Shah, in up near Jim Bocho. And when I went in, it was funny because when I first came in, it was that Japanese atmosphere that I remember of an office when I first came, you know, people sort of a thing about and, you know, sort of no one really saying it and I mean, one dream, you know, where would you want to go here or should I say time? And there was a young guy who'd obviously just come in in April, you know, and he had this tray with like three little bottles of green tea, you know, ready to go. And they took me down into the office and I was, I'd been a while, my Japanese was so rusty, I was so embarrassed. And when I got in, there was this A3 version of the book in Japanese. And I was like, I hadn't imagined it to be

1:06:45there. I was like, is this the book? And, you know, I leaped through this book and I thought, this is mad, you know, like 97 was like nearly what 25, nearly 30 years later, I'm back here, still sweating. And, you know, seeing this sort of love letter to Japan in Japanese in a publisher, you know, that's going to be sold in Japan. And tomorrow or Friday, I'm going to staya in Shimokitazawa, which is where I lived for the last 10 years of my time in Japan. And like, the idea that I'm going to go in there and the book that I created is going to be there in Japanese. With an OBI, it's just wild, you know, so it's sort of pinch yourself kind of stuff. You've done this, this body of work, it's too foreign, it's living in Japan, combining your passions, your interests for photography, documentary, jazz, and done it in English

1:07:46so, mostly for foreign audience. Having this translated into Japanese is now released in Japan. What was the reception for the audience that came to realize, oh, wait a second, a lot of people might not have even known there's that many of those around, or that few, they can't know how you look at it. Yeah, it's been good. I mean, the book has gone in the Japanese version, it's in second edition already, and is selling well. It's had some good coverage in the Japanese media. Some of the owners, I think a lot of the owners that are, or places that are featured in the book have it. I think for me, what was really important was that they can read the essays, you know, that my essay is called an Irishman in an American walk into a bar. You know, and it explains the best that I can, the point of it, why it exists, and why I love it, and why, and the book is actually dedicated to the owners, all of the owners. So the idea that the owners can read that book, or at least read those essays, and sort of,

1:08:53I'm able to express, or through that essay, express exactly how grateful I am to them, it is a really nice thing. And I think it sort of represents in a way that phenomenon that we're all familiar with, where sometimes things almost need to gain traction outside Japan, even Japanese things, you know, before they sort of are brought back and become popular, and that's an interesting thing, you know, I think years ago I would have put in applications for certain things, and I think there's still, there was just not that interest, there's still that perception amongst many Japanese of certain generations of Jazakisa, at least the Jazakisa of the imagination, being quiet, being scary, being kind of, you know, too hard to enter, particularly for women, and that's not really the case anymore, but there's still that persistent perception,

1:09:55and Jaz itself, as a music, there was periods where it was demonized, as a social ill, so that's still persists, you know, so it's kind of an interesting thing to have it coming back, and to be able to show it in that different light, you know. Where does that leave you today? You've temporarily left Japan to kind of pursue further studies back in Ireland, you are working on a second version of the book, which I imagine will include a new essay, perhaps a continuation, a list of bars, so where are you at now, where's your work in your project? It's a good question, I mean, yeah, you're right, so all the photos in Toku-Jazaro's book are from, actually from 2015, 2018, then obviously there was an enforced hiatus for five years for COVID, COVID, so all the new, all the, any photos that would be in a second book will all be from 19, from 2023 all morts. I don't wake up every morning wishing I was in Japan.

1:10:59I did this morning, and I am, so that's good when I saw the news and Belfast, but you know, I think like, it's only when you leave Japan, you realize what a massive part of your life it is. You know, it's a huge part of your identity. I had the experience of, in my late 40s of something I never imagined, which was to be, but on dating apps for the first time, where I met my current wife who calls me the Japan splainer, but I realized through that, just through chatting with people, you know, on these apps, how much just knowing Japan, loving Japan, understanding Japan is a language that you speak, you know, it's a language and I think there's no judgment, but if someone doesn't have that same language, it just can't work, you know. And when I asked Julie, my wife, you know, she said, oh, actually, I went to Japan last year of my own and I thought, well, this is a good start. And then I said, you know, what was your favorite memory?

1:12:03And she said, oh, walking around Miyajima in the rain, you know, I was like, okay, also good. And then she was like, the next text said, and everything else. And I thought, right. And I think, you know, so it's a huge part of your life. So, I mean, I come back every year to continue photographing. I've just been on it off, coming off a 10-day sort of Odyssey round to Hoku and Niigata Nagano. But I'm hopeful maybe to bring everything back together. I've been very lucky for some of these trips to get some funding from Pan Foundation and Delment Committee. I've had it from Lady Mark's Trust and also from the Great Britain Sassakawa Foundation. And to continue to photograph, which has been fantastic. And I'm hopeful perhaps after I do my PhD, which is actually looking at Protestant identity through a particular type of architecture in Ireland, to somehow bring everything back into this beautiful post-doctoral project, potentially, where I would really like to

1:13:07look at, you know, Japan and the kind of implications for society of an aging population and urban migration, that kind of thing and do that photographically. So that's kind of what I'm scheming at the moment. And that may then engender a return to Japan if only temporarily or for a short period of time, you know, but more than sort of a very intense two, three weeks running from coin locker to coin locker in Chinkhan Stations. So that's kind of the plan. And yeah, who knows. I mean, I came here for one year. I remember leaving my mom waving goodbye to my mom in the driveways. And I'll be back next year. And, you know, you came back 20 years. To 20 years. So I'm always slightly wary of kind of making predictions. But I think Japan will always be such a huge part of my life. You know, it's where I really grew up as an adult. And I think to come back and explore it photographically

1:14:09with the benefit of time and distance and hindsight, I think could be a fascinating thing to do, you know. Billy, we covered a lot of topics. A lot of you journey here in Japan. Is there anything that you would have like to bring up and dive into a little bit that maybe I didn't ask you about? I don't think so. I mean, I feel like I've been rambling on quite a lot there. So, but it's been no. I don't think so. It's just been really fascinating to think when you're, again, I was talking there, but sort of, you know, listening and constantly listening, sort of sitting in this chair and trying to go against my fidgeting instincts, you know, really forces you to think about the impact Japan has had. And I think it's, we all know it has a really deep impact on you, you know, that's been fascinating to be able to kind of unpack that a little bit. So thank you. No, it was my pleasure. I certainly really enjoyed it. And when you reached out, I had to read your book already. So for me, they were like, oh, well, fantastic. And it was a real pleasure to

1:15:11read. So we'll put the link in the description. So people that are curious can go find it, talk to the jazz joints and also links to your website and your social. So if you have more questions, want to find out more, maybe you want to join and attend one of your events, they can. Should they be in Belfast or in the UK, depending on the book? Looking forward to the next one. Next book and hopefully a lot more great photos and documentary works and maybe sometimes Baku in Japan. Hopefully. Philip, thank you very much. Thank you everyone for listening and watching. This was unpacking Japan and we'll see you next time. Take care. Thanks for sticking with us until the end. If you haven't already, please consider subscribing to unpacking Japan. It's the best way to help us grow and ensure you can keep bringing you these deep dives every week. Till next time, take care.