Activities per year
Abstract
The Japanese word ‘ kissaten’ (喫茶店) translates directly as ‘ tea-drinking shop’. There are approximately 600 jazz kissaten spread across the five main islands of Japan, and while jazz kissaten truly emerged as audio-listening bars in the post-war years, they peaked in ubiquity in the late 1960s/ early 1970s, during which times they were often a hub for counter-culture movements in bohemian areas like Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.
Tokyo Jazz Joints (www.tokyojazzjoints.com) is an ongoing research project, photographed by Philip Arneill, which has documented this rapidly vanishing culture since 2015, and to date has created an audiovisual chronicle of over 160 of these kissaten. Drawing on the idea of Foucault’s heterotopia, and using a selection of images from Tokyo Jazz Joints, this paper will present the unique environment of the Japanese jazz kissaten as a pseudo-religious sacred space, replete with its own rituals, protocols, iconography and clergy.
These unique, sacred spaces are a product of the cultural environment which created them, while simultaneously existing in direct cultural contestation with that same environment. Their very existence is a result of their owners’ decision to step outside of Japanese mainstream culture, and depends on their continued fervour and commitment to keep the faith in an era of changing tastes, digitisation and relentless urban gentrification.
Tokyo Jazz Joints (www.tokyojazzjoints.com) is an ongoing research project, photographed by Philip Arneill, which has documented this rapidly vanishing culture since 2015, and to date has created an audiovisual chronicle of over 160 of these kissaten. Drawing on the idea of Foucault’s heterotopia, and using a selection of images from Tokyo Jazz Joints, this paper will present the unique environment of the Japanese jazz kissaten as a pseudo-religious sacred space, replete with its own rituals, protocols, iconography and clergy.
These unique, sacred spaces are a product of the cultural environment which created them, while simultaneously existing in direct cultural contestation with that same environment. Their very existence is a result of their owners’ decision to step outside of Japanese mainstream culture, and depends on their continued fervour and commitment to keep the faith in an era of changing tastes, digitisation and relentless urban gentrification.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 26 Jun 2021 |
Event | Documenting Jazz 2021 - Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Duration: 23 Jun 2021 → 26 Jun 2021 |
Conference
Conference | Documenting Jazz 2021 |
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Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
City | Edinburgh |
Period | 23/06/21 → 26/06/21 |
Keywords
- Jazz
- Japan
- music
- culture
- sacred space
- heterotopia
- Japanese
- kissaten
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Entering the Inner Sanctum: Japanese Jazz Kissaten as Sacred Spaces'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Activities
- 1 Invited talk
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Exploring Jazz Through Photography
Philip Arneill (Speaker)
20 Apr 2022Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
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Tokyo Jazz Joints: Japanese jazz kissa as heterotopia
Arneill, P., 19 Nov 2021, In: Jazz-hitz: Jazz Music Research Journal. 4, p. 81-96 16 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access -
Tokyo Jazz Joints: A Visual Document of a Hidden, Vanishing World of Jazz
Arneill, P., 17 Jan 2020.Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper
File
Press / Media
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Japan 2021: TOKYO JAZZ JOINTS Photographic Exhibition
20/09/21
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Public Engagement Activities