大象传媒

A sonic journey into Japan's unique culture of music caf茅s and listening bars. Places where people come together to indulge in deep listening in audiophile quality, with venues for fans of everything from classical, jazz, to electronic music.

This culture has its origins in the time prior to the second world war, when imported records and audio equipment were prohibitively expensive. People began to gather in caf茅s where, for the price of a cup of coffee, they could listen to rare records on the highest quality gramophones.

While the traditional classical and jazz caf茅s are slowly disappearing, there are new modern listening bars emerging, often concentrating on specific genres and even microgenres of contemporary music, with a focus on the same concept of concentrated and collective listening.

Rich in binaural recordings, this radio documentary features the owners and regulars of legendary music caf茅s, like the classical music caf茅s Violon in Tokyo, and Musik in Kyoto, the jazz caf茅 Downbeat in Yokohama, as well as the DJ-Bar Bridge, a cutting-edge listening bar in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Producer: Andreas Hartmann in collaboration with Julia Shimura
Translation: Krzysztof Honowski
Voice Actors: Peter Becker, Matthew Burton, Ian Dickinson, Riah Knight and Tomas Sinclair Spencer
Photo Credit: Andreas Hartmann