Jazz Kissa – The Soul of Japanese Listening Culture – ERG Media

JAZZ KISSA – The Soul of Japanese Listening Culture is a photographic volume published by ERG Media, dedicated to Japan’s jazz cafés and to listening understood as a practice rather than a background condition. The first cafés dedicated to playing recorded jazz opened in Japan in the late 1920s, reflecting the country’s early fascination with Western culture and music; many closed during the Second World War, while the post-war period saw jazz kissa return in greater numbers across the country as spaces for dedicated listening. The book approaches these interiors as an archive — of sound, of objects, of the people who maintain them.

The publication collects over fifteen years of work by photographer and cultural historian Katsumasa Kusunose, who has documented these spaces and their custodians. A foreword by Devon Turnbull, founder of Ojas, connects the philosophy of the jazz kissa to the current global resurgence of high-fidelity audio culture. Running through the volume is an examination of Hi-Fi equipment as design — from Altec A7s to JBL speakers and bespoke amplifiers — and of how the physical presence of these machines shapes the experience of listening. 

Photography here functions as documentation and as atmosphere: rooms organised around a speaker, vinyl collections assembled over decades, seating arranged toward a source. The book is printed on specially sourced matte Japanese paper and bound in an embossed hardcover with the obi strip typical of Japanese publishing and LP covers, the cover surface drawn from the texture of Altec A7 cones.

/ publisher ERG Media
/ photography Katsumasa Kusunose
/ foreword Devon Turnbull, Ojas
/ publication 2025
/ hardcover with obi strip
/ 336 pages
/ 200+ illustrations
/ 25 × 35.5 cm
/ 2.2 kg
/ english

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