Today Tokyo is regarded as the world's second major "jazz city,"
boasting a thriving club and concert scene that lacks the prestige of New
York City, yet which rivals the Big Apple's population of musicians and
fans. But Tokyo has not always been the most prominent jazz city in Japan;
in fact, its ascendancy is quite recent. One must look elsewhere for the
roots of the music; what one finds is an interesting exercise in history(myth?)making,
roughly analogous to the famous episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa becomes
a pariah for daring to question the hagiographic treatment of town-founder
Jebediah Springfield. It reminds us that how we view our past history is
shaped more by contemporary political and economic concerns than by anything
else.
In Japan jazz essentially has two "cradles" or (to use a word
that is of even deeper significance in the Japanese political vocabulary)
"hometowns" (furusato). That is to say, two cities each claim
to be the "cradle" or "hometown of Japanese jazz," with
each basically ignoring the pretensions of the other. Yokohama and Kôbe
are both port cities that cherish their prominent roles as the twin "doors"
through which Western culture entered Japan in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Each city is close to larger, more politically and
economically important metropolises--Tokyo and ôsaka, respectively--yet
can boast that foreigners and their culture disembarked on their soil first.
Yokohama and Kôbe embraced large foreign settlements which profoundly
altered the landscapes and characters of the cities. Local historians love
to brag that beer, soap, railroads, and gas street lamps were introduced
in Yokohama before they were in Tokyo, for instance.
They say the same thing about jazz. The story goes that salon orchestra
musicians sailing aboard transpacific passenger liners bound for the US
brought back instruments, sheet music, and records of ragtime, American
popular dance music, and jazz, and that they "traded their violins
for saxophones." Kôbe jazz fans like to point out that Japan's
"first professional jazz band," the Laughing Stars, was founded
in Kôbe in 1923. They add that most of the major jazz musicians of
the twenties were in their city, soaking up and learning from Filipino and
American musicians who played in hotels, dance halls, and cafés around
town. Yokohama history buffs counter that Japan's first dance hall, the
Kagetsuen, was located in Yokohama, and that Japan's first "blues"
song was composed in their city. The Kanagawa prefecture encyclopedia likes
to point out that Yokohama was geographically closer to the US and therefore
got jazz before Kôbe did. They add that after World War II there were
more American GIs (and musicians, including Hampton Hawes, Walter Benton,
and Ed Thigpen) in Yokohama than in any other Japanese city. In short, both
cities have tried to impose some kind of narrative order on an importation
process that was extended, informal, and largely undocumented. This is what
Burton Peretti (in the recent volume Jazz Among the Discourses) calls "the
special elusiveness of jazz history...[which] is notoriously lacking in
hard, written documentation from past periods, and the verbal evidence we
are left with is often contradictory." No attempt by historians, professional
or amateur, can alter that.
The ritual of historical one-upsmanship is conducted through competing jazz
festivals that occur on the same weekend. Kôbe Jazz Street and Yokohama
Jazz Promenade each proclaim themselves to be the "cradle of Japanese
jazz" in promotions for their events. The Kôbe festival has been
going since 1983, but it does not seem to draw the name players that Yokohama's
festival (ten years younger) does. Yookohama hedges its bets by including
large "historical" exhibits of photographs and artifacts, with
the sole aim of convincing audiences that Yokohama is a "jazz town"
and always has been.
We are tempted to ask, why do they care so much? Why does it matter which
city had jazz first? Well, for one thing there are two important things
at stake: the ever-elusive "community identity" and tourist money.
Both Kôbe and Yokohama have been cursed by their proximity to larger
cities and suffered "image problems," which attempts at machi-zukuri
("town-building") in the 1980s have tried to rectify (indeed,
before the 1980s few people in Yokohama were talking about the city's importance
to jazz). The cities are engaging in an activity that occupies city councils,
amateur historians, museums, and grassroots activists around the globe--the
creation of a distinct community identity through the manipulation of history
and outright myth making. Communities that are successful at this venture
can count on drawing outside tourists who crave "local flavor."
Champaign and Urbana are doing the same thing as we speak.
In the end, Yokohama and Kôbe's exploitation of jazz is no more blatant
than is New Orleans'. But, while it is important to recognize the political
and economic motivations behind these efforts, and the concomitant sacrifice
of historical "fact" (whatever that is), that should not keep
us from enjoying the music. The Kôbe Jazz Street and Yokohama Jazz
Promenade employ and expose musicians, introduce many listeners to jazz
for the first time, and are simply a blast. Just don't believe everything
you hear that's called "history."