Japanese jazz and kissa-cool: coincidental cultural diplomacy.

In the last 10 years, the once relatively obscure worlds of Japanese jazz and jazz kissa, have emerged from the cultural underground – previously known largely only to canny collectors and loyal patrons – to take their place on the global cultural stage. Remarkably, this long overdue moment for a unique musical subculture has been largely coincidental. Despite the Japanese government's widely publicised Cool Japan soft-power initiative, and unprecedented number of tourists now visiting the country, neither jazz nor jazz kissa were apparently deemed ‘cool’ enough to be worthy of inclusion. This omission sits in stark contrast with the deliberate coupling from 1956-69 by the US State Department of diplomacy and jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie to promote ‘American values’ through extensive concert tours worldwide (ever the comedian, Dizzy characterised this as a ‘Cool War’). This visual paper looks at both the work of the Tokyo Jazz Joints documentary project, and pioneering record labels like BBE Records and their bestselling J-Jazz compilations. These projects, among others, have, in the wider context of the revival of hifi and analog culture, been integral in creating the explosion of interest around the world in both Japanese jazz and jazz kissa culture – the latter a phenomenon that has long been disappearing due to economic and demographic change – and consequently helped revive interest in the music and jazz kissa within Japan itself, including even an explainer that can now be found on the Tokyo Metropolitan government website.