Among the highlights of Shinjuku are its jazz coffee shops (jazzu kissa); and the fact that their jazz isn't live needn't worry you a bit. You'll never have heard recorded jazz like this before....
The biggest hi-fi jazz coffee shop in Shinjuku is the Mokuba, and it was while sitting there, eyeing the lovely girls, studying the bizarrely-curved ceiling, and listening to the over-loud jazz hammering in my ears, that I have had some of my profounder thoughts on jazz. Isn't jazz a reproduction in microcosm of an ideal society? A world in which all participants agree to stay within a minimal framework of rules, but allow unlimited personal variations within that framework? The Mokuba has very current jazz records, the latest acquisitions being listed on the wall with "Air Mail" written on them to denote recent arrival.
From Japan and Hong Kong on Five Dollars a Day (1965-66 Edition)
No comments:
Post a Comment