What Is a Japanese Listening Bar? The History of the Ongaku Kissa, and Where to Hear One in Tokyo

There are bars built for one thing only, which is listening to music. They're called Japanese listening bars. The format started in Japan, and over the last few years it has been turning up in cities overseas as well.

It looks like a new idea. Its roots go back a hundred years, to Japanese café culture and to one strand of it in particular: the ongaku kissa, the music café. What a listening bar actually is, how the ongaku kissa came about, and where in Tokyo you can still sit in one — let's take them in turn.

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What Is a Japanese Listening Bar?

A Japanese listening bar is a room set up so that records play through good equipment and the people there listen to the music itself. Unlike an ordinary bar, the music isn't background. It's the point of the place.

Most of them share one rule: keep your voice down. Talk less and you can hear what's coming out of the speakers properly — the texture of the record, the silence between tracks. The parts you'd normally let wash past come through clearly.

Ongaku Kissa, Jazz Kissa, Listening Bar: What's the Difference?

These rooms go by several names, and the names get mixed up, so here's the short version.

• Ongaku kissa (音楽喫茶): the general term for a café that plays music for you to listen to. No particular genre
• Jazz kissa (ジャズ喫茶): an ongaku kissa specializing in jazz. The best known of the three
• Listening bar: the English-language term that spread overseas, used mainly for the modern version that serves alcohol

The names differ and so does what's in the glass. The thinking underneath doesn't change: you set aside a room and a stretch of time for the music.

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The History of the Ongaku Kissa: Good Sound for the Price of a Coffee

Cafés that played music for listening go back to the first half of the twentieth century in Japan, when records and playback equipment were beginning to spread.

The one usually named as the starting point is Meikyoku Kissa Lion, which opened in Shibuya in 1926. It made its name playing classical music on serious equipment, and after it burned down in the firebombing of Tokyo it was rebuilt almost exactly as it had been. It's still open, on the same spot.

At the time, good audio equipment and records were not something an ordinary person could pick up. The café bought the expensive gear and the records, and you paid for a coffee and listened. That was the arrangement the ongaku kissa ran on.

After the war the role grew. Imported records and playback equipment were both expensive, and there weren't many places you could hear jazz from overseas, or anything new, in decent sound. The jazz kissa became one of the few points of contact. Homes in the cities were small, too, and playing anything at volume was difficult. The ongaku kissa existed because it offered a kind of listening you couldn't get at home.

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Not Only Jazz: The Cafés That Played Kayokyoku

Listening culture in Japan tends to get told through the jazz kissa, but jazz was not the only thing playing in cafés at the time.

Alongside them were cafés that played kayokyoku and pop. Kayokyoku was the mainstream popular music of Showa-era Japan, and the café was one of the places it played, the same as radio and television. We've written about kayokyoku itself here: "What Is Kayokyoku?"

Where the jazz kissa was somewhere you settled in to listen, the cafés playing kayokyoku and pop sat closer to everyday life.

Handling records from that period day to day, our impression is that the music was made on the assumption it would be heard properly, in good sound. The texture of the recording, the space left in the arrangements, the way the vocal sits in the mix. Listen in a room like an ongaku kissa and the intention comes through. Showa kayokyoku, not only jazz, gives back more the harder you listen to it.

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What Is Deep Listening? And Why Coffee Makes It Stick

At the center of the listening bar and the ongaku kissa is deep listening: time spent listening to music and doing nothing else.

Attention is limited. Talk over a record, or scroll while it plays, and the music slips into the background. Cut the other inputs and you take far more out of the same disc.

There's a second reason the ongaku kissa experience has always come with the smell of coffee. Smell is said to have the most direct route of any of the senses to the parts of the brain that handle memory and emotion (the limbic system), which is why a scent can pull a memory back with it — the phenomenon usually called the Proust effect. Hear a particular piece of music alongside a particular smell and the whole thing lodges in memory more firmly. That's the mechanism behind a song you heard in a café staying with you for years.

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Ongaku Kissa You Can Still Visit in Tokyo

The ongaku kissa isn't a closed chapter. There are still working ones in Tokyo. Here are two that have been going a long time and are easy enough to walk into for the first time.

• Meikyoku Kissa Lion (Shibuya): a classical music café open since 1926. The seats face the large speakers, and there are scheduled concert slots several times a day. Talking loudly and taking photos are both off-limits

• Meikyoku Kissa Violon (Asagaya): plays classical through the same speakers and tube amplifiers it opened with. Once a month there's a session playing 78s on a Credenza phonograph built in 1925. Talking is not allowed inside

The day we went to Violon, it was closed. The notice on the door said maintenance on the equipment. Which tells you something about the place: this is a shop that will shut its doors to keep the speakers and tubes it opened with running. If it's open, the sound is right. That's where the trust comes from.

Before You Go

An ongaku kissa doesn't run like an ordinary café, and the rules vary from one shop to the next. If it's your first time, these are the things to know.

• Talking: how strict it gets depends on the shop. At Lion, talking loudly and taking photos are both prohibited. At Violon, talking isn't allowed at all. Across jazz kissa more broadly, an outright ban on conversation is now the exception; most shops just ask you to keep it down. Check the notices at the door and inside
• Photos and posting: many shops ask you not to shoot, and Lion prohibits it outright. If you're not sure, don't
• Requests: the shop decides what gets played. Song requests generally aren't taken
• Group size: go in ones and twos. The seats face the speakers, so a large group doesn't fit the room
• Payment: bring cash. Violon doesn't take credit cards
• Ordering: order a drink once you sit down. At Violon everything on the drinks menu is ¥500
• Time of day: daytime is for listening, and evenings tend to be looser. Violon has live performances from around 7pm on some days, and the monthly 78s concert on the third Sunday at 6pm is ¥1,000 including a drink
• Smoking: it varies by shop. Violon is entirely non-smoking

Put your phone on silent, order a coffee or a drink, and stay a while. That's how these rooms are used.

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Deep Listening at Home

You don't need to be in one of these rooms to do it. Set aside the time to concentrate on music and you can have the same hour at home.

• Leave your phone in another room, notifications off
• Play one record start to finish, in the order the artist put it in, instead of shuffling a playlist
• Turn the lights down, pour something, and give the time to listening. Dropping the needle is itself the switch into paying attention

Keep the sleeve in your hands while it plays. A 12-inch square of artwork carries the period and the artist's own expression (→ City Pop Album Cover Art: Graphic Design of 80s Japan).

Add scent and the hour stays with you longer. That's the Proust effect above, run at home. We at KAISHU VINYL are a Tokyo-based curation brand handling Japanese records released from the Showa era into the early Heisei years, and our OBENTO BOX pairs the records we've chosen with incense, so you can have something of the ongaku kissa's multi-sensory version at home.

→ See the OBENTO BOX

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FAQ: Japanese Listening Bars

Do I need to know about music to enjoy one?

No, no background required. It's a place for hearing things you don't know, so keeping your voice down and listening is enough.

Do I need expensive audio equipment for deep listening?

No. What it takes is uninterrupted time rather than gear, and one turntable is enough to start at home.