About

— Documenting a vanishing world of Japanese jazz culture —

Over his time in Japan, Belfast-born photographer Philip Arneill found himself drawn by the fascination of one decidedly Japanese twist on jazz culture: the jazz kissa, or café, where aficionados listen to vinyls or talk jazz with their fellows over a cup of coffee. Japanese jazz bars and coffee shops are insular worlds where time ceases to exist, removed from the speed and chaos of the modern urban landscape. 

In 2015 he and a friend, the American broadcaster and writer James Catchpole, embarked on a quest to document these rapidly vanishing icons of urban culture. The "Tokyo Jazz Joints" project has since taken the pair to jazz kissa and bars not only in that city but all up and down the archipelago, including such hallowed legends as Eagle and Pithecanthropus Erectus in Tokyo, Basie in Iwate, Jazz Spot Yamatoya in Kyoto, and Down Beat in Yokohama. 

Tokyo Jazz Joints is a visual chronicle of this unique culture that captures the transient beauty of these spaces. These dedicated jazz listening spaces are slowly vanishing in the face of changing trends, ageing customers and gentrification.  This book preserves these living museums before they disappear forever. 

- Publisher: Kehrer Verlag

- Published: 2023
- Hardcover with embossing and slipcase
- Dimensions: 24 x 21 x 2 cm
- 168 pages
- 129 color illustrations
- English
- ISBN 978-3-96900-120-2