Jazz has always been the soundtrack for Japan's internationalization. Until recently, jazz served as a cultural influence as powerful as baseball or democracy. American jazz musicians were treated with respect and a kind of awe. While Japanese musicians played jazz among themselves, they only rarely played together with western musicians. Now, however, with more and more foreigners making their homes in Japan and Japanese traveling abroad in increasing numbers, the older mindset has crumbled. Nowadays, several global-minded jazz musicians have started to mix and match nationalities as comfortably as slipping standards into a set.
Increasingly, getting outside Japan has become a part of the jazz life for many Japanese. One of the first to make a truly international group was pianist Yosuke Yamashita. After traveling through the United States, and finally settling in New York, Yamashita hooked up with Cecil McBee and Pheeroan akLaff. Their trio has continued to record new material nearly every year since 1988. Seats for their annual tour through Japan must be reserved far in advance. Their intensely thoughtful approach to the piano trio often adds Japanese elements, such as taiko drums or Japanese flute for a truly cross-cultural take on jazz.
A few younger Japanese players now have similar arrangements. They keep a regular working band in Tokyo and another with musicians from abroad. Neither one has preference over the other, but the chance for the Japanese musicians to go abroad and for the foreign musicians come to Japan works well all around. More than just a regular pick-up band, musicians such as pianist Yutaka Shiina divide their time between local Tokyo groups and different combos with musicians from the States. Trumpeter Tomonao Hara similarly has two groups. One group he calls his New York quartet and the other his Tokyo quartet. They may get together only once a year, but when they do, they jam all the harder.
Rather than just picking standards that everyone knows, these musicians prepare compositions for the particular approach and sound of the group. Pianist Hiroshi Minami has long traveled to and from Denmark, writing, recording and playing there and in Japan with Kasper Tranberg and Anders Mogensen, among others. Their Euro-jazz sound has continued to evolve as the different experiences and outlooks form a stimulating exchange. Other musicians, though, work on more specific projects, such as the young (still in her 20s) pianist Hitomi Nishiyama, whose last two CDs were recorded in Sweden with bassist Hans Backenroth and drummer Anders Kjellberg. The trio performs as often in Europe as in Japan.
At the extreme, though, arrangements might be long-distance, but very fruitful. Keyboardist Kei Akagi was born in Japan, grew up in the States, went to college in Japan, and finally toured with famed bands including Miles Davis, before settling finally in California. He has recorded the past five years with fellow trio members, bassist Tomokazu Sugimoto and drummer Tamaya Honda, who reside in Tokyo. The short hop over the Pacific Ocean seems to only improve their intense, provocative music. The English saying, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," seems to apply to jazz as well, "Absence makes the swing grow harder!"
This shift towards the larger jazz world will only continue, as it gets easier to not only send scores and sound files by email, but to catch a flight and get together. Though Japan is geographically separate, that matters much less than it once did. The exchange and interaction with other musicians is vital to the strength of individual musicians and to the jazz scene as well. Of course, jazz has always thrived on this type of exchange, only for Japanese, one has a little bit farther to go to reach the other jazz communities. Certainly, Japanese jazz has become more international than ever before.
