Kyoto has become an unlikely center for Japanese counterculture, where unique, riotous acts are set free in the city's underground clubs, grungy dive bars and historic cafes
An Irish pub is, perhaps, not the obvious place to find yourself in the cultural heart of Japan. It’s with some trepidation, then, that I settle into a corner table at, an Irish pub above an udon restaurant in downtown Kyoto, where the door sign advertises that classic combination of ‘draught Guinness, good Irish music, and curry bread of Noharaya’.
The need for physical preparedness becomes apparent as the night proceeds, a marathon of modern jazz improvisation that unspools through several hours with more than 30 performers, many of whom return to the stage time and again. The evening unfolds in an amorphous phantasmagoria of music and light. There’s a circus feel, with children running amok across the stage, ducking beneath drum risers, synthesizers and microphone leads. The decibels rise; they stick their fingers in their ears.
Ferdinand tells me things are moving forward here, even if progress is slow. “When I was in Europe in the 2000s, it was all about underground raves; now everyone wants them here in Japan,” he says. “Ten years ago, we were in the 1980s in Japan. Now we’re in the 1990s.” The ambient music scene in particular is growing, boosted by a 2022 multimedia exhibition held in Kyoto by Brian Eno, the British musician and record producer who popularised the genre in the 1970s and 1980s.
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