Talk:Jazz kissa

Number of jazz kissa
＜at their peak, there were around 600 jazz kissa operating across Japan.＞ ＜At their height in the mid-1970s, there were around 600 jazz kissa operating in Japan.＞ Hello. I am Japanese.This number of 600 jazz kissa is a mistake. The 1970s had the highest number of Jazz Kissas, but there are no exact statistics. However, in Japan, it is often said that there were more than 1,000 jazz kissas during the heyday, and there may have been around 1,500. The 1980 edition of "Jazz Nihon Retto (Jazz at Japanese archipelago)", published by Jazz Hihyo in 1980, lists 770 Jazz Kissa in Japan, and this is the largest number of jazz kissa in the list published in Japan. However, this data does not cover the number of jazz kissa at that time, and it is known that there are many stores that are not listed in this book. I know it myself. In any case, since more than 600 stores were listed in 1980, the expression "there were 600 jazz kisssa in the heyday of the 1970s" is clearly incorrect. In addition, there are currently about 600 jazz kissa in Japan. Here is the URL of the site that posted the list. https://jazz-kissa.jp/jazz-kissa-map-in-japan In Japan, the number of Jazz kissa is said to have halved compared to its heyday, but since the number is 600, the expression "there were 600 in its heyday" is still strange. The BBC article is cited as the source of the 600 store number, but we must also consider that this article does not show the basis for the number. ＜At its peak, Japan had more than 600 such cafes, mostly in Tokyo and Kyoto.＞ The BBC article is written like this, which is clearly wrong. Since the early 1960's, jazz kissa has been all over Japan. Jazz hihyo published a book titled "Jazz Nihon Retto (Jazz at Japanese archipelago)" that featured jazz kissa all over Japan eight times in 1972, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1986, 1995, and 2005. However, there are many jazz kissa all over Japan other than Tokyo and Kyoto. The number of jazz kisssa in Tokyo listed in the above-mentioned "Jazz Nihon Retto 1980 edition" is 179, and the number of Jazz kissa in Kyoto is 45. 224 in total for Tokyo and Kyoto. The remaining 546 Jazz kissa are stores in areas other than Tokyo and Kyoto. This is 1980 data. If you look at this, you can see the inaccuracy of the BBC article.

In any case, we have yet to find data that accurately records the number of jazz kissa in the 1970s, so we cannot say with certainty that there were 600 jazz kissa in their heyday. Even if I talk about it, I think that I can only express it as "it is said that there were more than 1000 jazz kissa". Zckza (talk) 13:35, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi Zckza. I wrote the majority of this article. The ~600 number comes from the BBC article and an article by Michael Pronko in The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies. In the article, Pronko quotes Mike Molasky's book (Jazu Kissa Ron: Sengo no Nihon Bunka o Aruku) which says:
 * there were over 500 jazz cafes reported in the magazine “Jazz Nippon-retto” of 1976. What’s more . . . the cafes which answered the questionnaire was 80 percent out of all cafes in Japan. There could have been over 600 jazz cafes in the middle of ’70s.
 * I do not speak Japanese so cannot vouch for the Molasky book but nonetheless I was left confident in the ~600 number. Are you able to provide any sources supporting your ~1000 number? I am not doubting that this could be true, I just haven't come across anything saying this. Vladimir.copic (talk) 22:20, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hello.Thank you for your reply. The "Jazz Nippon-retto" was published 7 times: 1972, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1986, 1995, and 2005. I have all of them. And the 1980 issue of "Jazz Nippon-retto" has 770 stores listed. So it is clear that there are more establishments in 1980 than there were in the 1970s (600). The phrase “at their peak, there were around 600 jazz kissa operating across Japan.”" At their height in the mid-1970s, there were around 600 jazz kissa operating in Japan." should be corrected. The phrase "there were more than 770 jazz kissa in the heyday of jazz kissa" is also not appropriate. In fact, there were many more. This is the experience of those who went to jazz kissa in the 70s and 80s. Now, there are about 600 jazz kissa in Japan. We know the addresses of all of them. Isn't it obviously strange that the number of jazz kissa in the 1970s, when they were at their peak, was 600, and that the number of cafes today, which is said to have declined significantly since the 1980s, is 600?

I checked out Mr. Molasky's book that you mentioned. Here he writes, <The 1976 "Jazz Nippon-retto" lists over 500 jazz kissa. However, according to the president of the publisher of the book, only about 80% of the stores responded to the survey, so the number is estimated to be over 600. ＞Please consider that the 600 jazz kissa you are basing your number on is also an estimate. Mike Molasky writes that the 1976 "Jazz Nippon-retto" had over 500 jazz kissa responded and the response rate was 80%, so the actual number could be estimated to be over 600. If we follow this logic, we could argue that the 1980 "Jazz Nippon-retto" lists 770 jazz kissa, so if the response rate is 80%, we could estimate the actual number to be about 1,000 jazz kissa. But that would be a bit odd.Each issue of "Jazz Nippon-retto" is based on the publisher's method of sending letters to the stores listed in the book and publishing those that responded. However, the publisher did not know all of the jazz kissas that were in business at the time. Those who knew them at the time understand that there were quite a few stores that were not on the list.

Mike Molasky published "Jazz Kissa Ron" in 2010, and this list of Jazz Kissa throughout Japan, which I point out to you, was published in 2016. https://jazz-kissa.jp/jazz-kissa-map-in-japan This list is a list trusted by Japanese newspapers and popular music societies. Had this list been published in 2010, Molasky's description would have been different.
 * In any case, we have yet to find a document that accurately records the number of jazz cafes in the 1970s, and we probably never will. However, I clearly disagree with the statement that "there were more than 600 in its heyday" just because there is no data available. It would be more appropriate to say, "It is estimated that there were more than 1,000 jazz kissa.

There is a Japanese wikipedia version of "jazz kisssa" but this English version is far superior. It is very well done. That's why the expression "there were more than 600 jazz kissa at its peak" is so far removed from reality, which is a great pity.There is currently no documentation available anywhere that shows the total number of jazz kissa in the 1970s. For this reason, we probably should not give a figure for jazz kissa in the 1970s. What is certain is that there are approximately 600 jazz kissa operating in Japan today. We think that this number should be added to the article and the statement "there were 600 jazz kissa in the 70s" should be rewritten.I will write it in addition. The number of shops listed in The 2005 "Jazz Nippon-retto" is 667.

 This statement is clearly incorrect. First of all, there is no documentation available that shows the number of Jazz Kissa in the immediate postwar period. Also, considering that the number of Jazz Kissa today is about 600, it is clear that this statement is contradictory.

The sources for the fact that there are currently 600 Jazz Kissa are as follows.

Katsumasa Kusunose (2021)Gateway to Jazz Kissa Vol.2 English version ‘What is a Jazz Kissa ? ‘p.10 Jazz City LLC ISBN978-4-9910492-4-8

List of Jazz Kissa ′Gateway to Jazz Kissa′ https://jazz-kissa.jp/jazz-kissa-map-in-japan

Is there any documentation that shows the number of jazz kissa in the immediate postwar period? As we don't have that at the moment,

< Jazz kissa are now greatly reduced in number from their 20th century peak. The remaining kissa are largely the same as they were in the immediate post-war period>

I would like to revise the text of the article to state as follows.

<Jazz kissa are now greatly reduced in number from their 20th century peak. The remaining kissa are currently about 600.＞

Please give me your honest opinion.

Zckza (talk) 06:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Hey @Zckza. The Jazz Kissa publications are self published and therefore, per the WP:SPS guidelines, cannot be used in the article (although it is a great publication). I have some ideas of rephrasing the number of kissa in the article to reflect the 1980 edition of Jazz Nippon-retto. Are you able to provide a link or ISBN etc of this publication so I can cite it (page numbers as well)? Vladimir.copic (talk) 22:11, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Vladimir,Thanks for the reply. Perhaps I lack the basic knowledge to edit Wikipedia. I don't know what your definition of "self-published" is, as you point out." The publisher of "Gateway To Jazz Kissa", JAZZ CITY LLC, is a registered corporation and its books are sold in bookstores and record stores. The president of this company is indeed Katsumasa Kusunose, the author of "Gateway To Jazz Kissa," but does this mean that the book is considered self-published? If so, I would think that "Jazz Nihon Retto" published by Jazz Hihyo would also fall into the "self-published" category. I would think that these publishers would be in the "independent publisher" category.
 * Anyway, in the article "Listening bars, cousins of Japanese jazz kissa, launch worldwide" in the Japan Times, which is referred to as a source in "Impact", In this article, Katsumasa Kusunose appears  an editor familiar with Listening Bar and Jazz Kissa. This article is an English translation of an article in Yomiuri Shinbun, Japan's largest newspaper with a circulation of over 6 million. According to Yusuke Tsuruta, the writer of this article, when he contacted JASPM-The Japanese Association for the study of Popular Music to find out the number of jazz kissa in Japan today, the answer was"about 600" and they cited the list published by Gateway To Jazz Kissa as their source. JASPM is an academic society where Shuhei Hosokawa, often referred to as the source of this Wikipedia article, served as a board member from 2000 to 2004.This is a story I heard directly from Yusuke Tsuruta who is an acquaintance of mine, and until Gateway To Jazz Kissa published this information, there was no data available on the total number of jazz kissa in Japan today. And the Japanese version of Wikipedia uses this data as its source.
 * Now, let me present another source for "about 600": in 2023, Sekaibunkasha published a book titled "Zero-karawakaru! Jazz-nyumon" (ISBN 978-4-4-118-22233-9). This book is written by multiple authors and aims to convey the basic knowledge of "JAZZ" from all angles for jazz beginners. The book is supervised by Masahiro Goto, who is the owner of Jazz Kissa, which has been in business for over 50 years and has published about 30 books as a jazz critic. The book has a chapter introducing Jazz Kissa, and Katsumasa Kusunose was chosen to write it. Kusunose writes on page 162 of this book, "There are about 600 jazz kissa in Japan now." Sekaibunkasya was founded in 1946 and is a well-known publishing company in Japan with over 200 employees. Please consider whether this statement should be adopted as a source. Zckza (talk) 00:47, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Free Kissa
＜In the 1970s and 80s, free kissa, or furii kissa, emerged which were focussed on experimental music.＞

I have never seen the name "Free Kissa" in any published literature in Japan, but where did the term come from? Even Japanese people know that "free" also means "available for free", so no one calls it "free kissa". Certainly, in the 70's and 80's, there were some places that played so-called "free jazz" records or offered experimental live performances, such as "Mary Jane" in Shibuya, Tokyo, "Minor" in Kichijoji, Tokyo, and "Good man" in Ogikubo, Tokyo, but they were all called "Jazz Kissa" or "Live House. Zckza (talk) 03:32, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi again Zckza. Free kissa are spoken about in David Novak's book Music at the Edge of Circulation and his article "2·5×6 metres of space: Japanese music coffeehouses and experimental practices of listening". In the article, Novak explains in a footnote that this is not a reference to free jazz and that ‘free’ here implies a broader freedom from all existing idiomatic musical structures, and was concurrently employed in generic constructions such as ‘free rock’, and ‘free improvisation’ (Bailey 1996). The Japanese context of ‘free jazz’ is part of a larger transnational movement towards decontextualisation and erasure in historical narratives of improvisation – see Lewis (2004) – in which both Japanese ‘free’ music and ‘jazz’ take part. References here are to:
 * Bailey, D. 1993. Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (New York, De Capo Press)
 * Lewis, G. 2004. ‘Improvised music after 1950: Afrological and Eurological perspectives’, in The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue, ed. D. Fischlin and A. Heble (Hanover, NH, Wesleyan University Press), pp. 131–63
 * I have made sure that this article is well referenced. I can see that you are a newish account (Welcome!). A tip for the future, for this and other articles, you can usually look at the inline citations to check sources that support information in the article. Vladimir.copic (talk) 22:35, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, Vladmir,Thank you for your reply here.Perhaps you do not understand the intent of my submission. What I am claiming is that there is no such genre called "Free Kissa" in Japan. I have heard it referred to as “jazz kissa playing free jazz” though. Dare I say "free jazz kissa"? But "Free Kissa" and "Free Jazz Kissa" are clearly different things.

I don't have any other opinions on this post, but what are we going to do now? I would say that Mr. Novak is free to call the place where musicians 　performs experimental music in Japan "Free Kissa", but this is his own invention, not the reality. There is no place called "Free Kissa" in Japan or a store that calls itself "Free Kissa".If you are still going to post the description of this article as it is, please indicate specifically the books, magazines, newspaper articles that use the name "Free Kissa" and the shops that call themselves "Free Kissa". Zckza (talk) 06:53, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi @Zckza - I haven't been editing much lately so sorry for the late reply. I've done a reasonable search for "free kissa" and, in English at least, it looks like, as you suggested, Novak is really the only person talking about this. I've therefore given the information in-text attribution to Novak. Vladimir.copic (talk) 22:06, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi Vlamidir,thank you for taking the time to reply. Just as your search for "Free Kissa" in English yielded no hits at all, so too did your search in Japanese yield no hits at all. Zero. And if you get a chance, ask the Japanese people you meet, "Do you know free kissa?" . In Japan, there are many hybrid words such as "Jazz Kissa", "Rock Kissa", and "Manga Kissa", but almost zero Japanese know "Free Kissa". I have great doubts about posting such an extremely rare coined words on wikipedia, where versatility is required. Many people may take it to mean that there are coffee shops called "Free Kissa" in Japan because they are listed here. If you insist on publishing the term, perhaps you need to add a note saying that "Novak has named such spaces "free kissa", but this term is not commonly used in Japan at all. More to the point, how significant is the wikipedia introduction of a word that no one but Novak uses?　Please give me a rational reason why you should post this term here, which was invented by Novak and is not in common use.Zckza (talk) 02:26, 19 March 2023 (UTC)