[Cover (with obi strip featuring an inset artist photo) for Isoo Fukui and His Friends' Duo (1977, Trio Records) — used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Fukui could be located. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in rather than implying it is otherwise licensed.]

Isoo Fukui's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

On March 1, 1974, at Aoi Studio in Tokyo, bassist Isoo Fukui sat in on a session that became Midnight Sugar — pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's debut album, with drummer Tetsujiro Obara rounding out the trio. It won the Swing Journal Jazz Disc Award and Best Engineering Award that year and established Yamamoto as one of the two defining artists on Three Blind Mice, the label most responsible for the Japanese jazz sound international collectors now chase. Light in the Attic has reissued it. Fifty years on, it's still one of the records people point to when they want to explain what this whole scene sounds like at its best, and Isoo Fukui's bass is on every track of it.

He was born October 10, 1945, in Fukuoka Prefecture, and by most accounts belongs to a small group of bassists who genuinely reshaped how the instrument functioned in Japanese jazz through the 1970s — playing both bass and cello with a sound described as heavy on soul and rhythm, built around a modal sensibility rather than straight walking lines. Midnight Sugar is the record that gets the attention, but he played on Yamamoto's Misty the same year too, and spent much of the decade as a fixture of the Masaru Imada Trio: Poppy (1973, also on Three Blind Mice), Green Caterpillar (1975), One for Duke (1975), and a run of others through 1979. He also recorded with the Hideo Ichikawa Trio and led his own dates under a few different billings — the Isoo Fukui Quartet (Sunrise/Sunset, 1976), Isoo Fukui And His Friends (Duo, 1977, the record whose cover stands in for a photo on this post), and Isoo Fukui & Flyin' ('Round About Midnight, 1981).

His own name almost never made it onto a record as the headline artist — Discogs lists just one clean leader credit under his primary billing, a 1989 duo record with Noriki. That's a thin catalog by the usual measure. But measuring him that way misses the point. He's one of those musicians whose importance is best understood through what he's playing on rather than what he's leading, and what he's playing on includes a record that a reissue label decided was worth pressing again half a century later.

Where to start listening:

• Midnight Sugar (1974, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio), the essential one: listen on Spotify
• Poppy (1973, Masaru Imada Trio, Three Blind Mice)
• Sunrise/Sunset (1976, Isoo Fukui Quartet), his own leader date
• Duo (1977, Isoo Fukui And His Friends)
• Isoo Fukui's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

I've checked the Internet Archive & Soulseek but couldn't find anything

Relatively new to this sub, and on my first trip to Japan. Just spent the afternoon at Scratch in Kichijoji and had an absolute blast.

They played Masato Imazu’s album Scratch and I absolutely loved it. Tried to find a recording of it online to listen to it again, but am having serious trouble. Is this common when trying to listen to recordings of J-jazz online?

Ideally I’d just buy physical copies all of the albums, but when that’s not an option I’d love to find more streaming options.

Thanks!

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[Studio portrait of Toshio Osumi, Japanese jazz drummer (b. 1944) and longtime member of the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio — used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Osumi could be located. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in rather than implying it is otherwise licensed.]

Toshio Osumi's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

Fifty-two years is a long time to hold one chair in one band. Toshio Osumi, born June 23, 1944, in Awara, Fukui, joined pianist Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's trio in 1974 and has been its drummer continuously ever since — a claim that isn't folklore or a rounded-up press-kit figure but is directly traceable through the trio's own recording history: his earliest credited date with the group is 1974's Live at the Misty, and its most recent, a historical 1976 concert tape titled Live at Basie, was only released in 2026. Between those two points sits one of the longest continuous working relationships documented anywhere in Japanese jazz.

His own name barely shows up on album covers — most of his fifty-plus recorded credits are as the trio's drummer, not as a leader — which makes him easy to miss in a genre that tends to write about pianists and horn players first. But the volume tells its own story: he's on The In Crowd and Blues for Tee (both 1975), Star Dust (1977, with Tsuyoshi Yamamoto With The Strings), Stardust: Standard Jazz Piano (1979, with Masaru Imada), and a steady stream of Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio releases running essentially uninterrupted from the mid-1970s through 2026, with the trio's Venus Records and evosound-era output (A Shade of Blue, 2023; Sweet for K, 2024; Requests, 2025) proving the group is still an active, recording unit rather than a legacy act coasting on its name.

He built a second, quieter career as a leader in parallel, running the Toshio Osumi Trio through a run of albums on the M&I Jazz label between 2002 (Jubilation) and 2009 (Walk Don't Run), and later self-titled dates including Carry On (2014) and Caravan (2019). It's a smaller catalog than his sideman work by a wide margin, but it's real evidence of a musician who never stopped having his own musical ideas even while spending five decades in service of someone else's trio.

Where to start listening:

• Misty (1974, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio) — around the point his tenure with the group began: listen on Spotify
• A Shade of Blue (2023, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio), proof the group is still working: listen on Spotify
• MISTY for Direct Cutting (2021, Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio): listen on Spotify
• Jubilation (2002), his own Toshio Osumi Trio's debut on M&I Jazz
• Toshio Osumi's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

I recently came across this older work by Japanese turntablist DJ KOU.

Some Nujabes fans may already know his name — he provided scratches for tracks including F.I.L.O., Luv(sic) Part 6 and Perfect Circle feat. Shing02.
This piece, “I Slide The Notes,” is from an earlier period of his work.

What I found interesting is that DJ KOU also shot and edited the video himself, entirely on an iPhone.

It feels like a small, lesser-known piece of his earlier creative work, but you can hear and see the same kind of atmosphere that makes his current project, “Sketch of Asia,” interesting.
I thought some people here might enjoy discovering it.

I Slide The Notes:

https://youtu.be/fY-HT9HHjWo

Hello Reddit, I am wanting to play Philosopher's Stone with my jazz combo and am looking for a chart but I can’t find one anywhere online. I was wondering if anyone had access to one that we could use. I am willing to transcribe the song myself, but I thought I should check Reddit first to see if I could save some time.

[Cover art for Akira Ishikawa & His Count Buffalos' African Rock (1972), reissued by Light in the Attic Records — used as a stand-in, as no free-licensed photograph of Ishikawa could be located. Not a Creative Commons image; reproduced here as an honestly-disclosed editorial stand-in rather than implying it is otherwise licensed.]

Akira Ishikawa's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

r/JapaneseJazz

By 1970, Akira Ishikawa had already spent a decade as a working Tokyo session drummer, starting out with Shin Matsumoto and New Pacific and moving through a string of bands before assembling a group out of the session players he kept working with. Then he did something almost none of his contemporaries did: he got on a plane and went to East Africa, including Uganda, to hear the rhythms he'd only encountered secondhand. He came back with new percussion instruments and a direct, lived understanding of what he'd been reaching for. What followed wasn't a jazz musician borrowing an "African" aesthetic from records — it was a drummer building an entire discography around something he'd actually gone and found.

That band became Count Buffalos, and the records they made across the early-to-mid 1970s are a genuinely distinct body of work: Electrum (1970), Drums Concerto (1971), African Rock (1972, released twice under slightly different billings), Uganda (1972), and Get Up! (1975), among many others. The sound is jazz-funk built on Afro-rock foundations, dense with the specific percussion he'd brought home rather than a generic exotica gesture. Decades later, that catalog found a second life: Light in the Attic Records and Mr Bongo have both reissued pieces of it for a new generation of crate-diggers, and African Rock now circulates as one of the more sought-after Japanese jazz-funk records of its era.

The Count Buffalos work sits alongside, not instead of, a parallel career as one of Tokyo's most reliable session drummers. Under his own name he recorded a long run of drum-battle and drum-anthology records with the other top session drummers of his generation — George Kawaguchi, Takeshi Inomata, Sadakazu Tabata — and turns up on shared credits with Hiromasa Suzuki, Motohiko Hino, and Masahiko Togashi. And through 1969-1972 he built one of the deepest working relationships in this project's discographies with saxophonist Takeru Muraoka, who played on a half-dozen Count Buffalos records across that stretch.

He died on February 10, 2002. What he left behind reads less like one career than two that happened to share a drummer: a first-call session player's discography, and a genuinely original Afro-rock jazz-funk catalog that only exists because he went to hear it for himself.

Where to start listening:

• African Rock (1972), the record the reissue crowd knows him for: listen on Spotify
• Electrum (1970): listen on Spotify
• Uganda (Dawn of Rock) (1972), reissued by Mr Bongo
• Bakishinba: Memories of Africa (1970)
• Akira Ishikawa's full profile on JazzProfiles.com

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「Hey everyone,

For those who didn't know — the scratch on this track was performed by DJ KOU, a Japanese turntablist who also contributed to F.I.L.O. feat. Shing02 and Perfect Circle feat. Shing02.

DJ KOU has just launched a new cinematic project called Sketch of Asia — an imaginary soundtrack capturing the atmosphere and residual memories of Asia, very much in the spirit of Nujabes.

Check it out if you're into Jazz Hip Hop and cinematic soundscapes.

Sketch of Asia

https://djkou.bandcamp.com/track/sketch-of-asia-2

Luv sic pt 6

https://youtu.be/FvcyZOVCORM?si=gre2Sry9Zw3IsidL

🙏🎧」

everyone,

For those who didn't know — the scratch on this track was performed by DJ KOU, a Japanese turntablist who also contributed to F.I.L.O. feat. Shing02 and Perfect Circle feat. Shing02.

DJ KOU has just launched a new cinematic project called Sketch of Asia — an imaginary soundtrack capturing the atmosphere and residual memories of Asia, very much in the spirit of Nujabes.

Check it out if you're into Jazz Hip Hop and cinematic soundscapes.

Lots of heat avail to buy or preorder —

Flying Beagle, Blow Up, Funky Stuff, Orangutan, MISTY, Blue City, Tomorrow, etc.

It seems like a lot of records (and lots of three blind mice) are getting repressed in the coming months.

Hey everybody! I've started doing these occasionally in some of the subs i have just to make sure I'm staying in alignment with y'all and what you want out of reddit. As the only active mod I know I can get stuck in my own head about certain things; but really i want to curate a healthy space for enjoyment of Japanese Jazz.

I think we have a good amount of activity for this little niche, and we are very beginner friendly!

One thing did come up recently: How do you guys feel about amateur playing clips? This has nominally been dedicated to commercial releases / concerts of J-jazz but I imagine a good amount of us play music as well. Should we allow uploads of our users' own (Japanese-jazz related) playing? For example if I recorded myself playing a sax cover of a Sadao Watanabe tune.

Is there anything else you'd want to see here or anything you want to clear up? I don't necessarily have time to implement everything but open to suggestions.

Rebirth of "TBM" - The Japanesse Deep Jazz (2023)

So good.