Bluegrass in Japan
How America's liveliest genre of roots music found a second life on the slopes of Mt. Fuji
Another day, another guitar rabbit hole: we were researching C.F. Martin’s Japanese endeavors (specifically their “Cat’s Eyes” licensed collaboration with Tokai) for our recent YouTube video on the subject, when I stumbled upon some rather interesting lore about the world of Japanese bluegrass.
As I was looking through Cat’s Eyes catalogs from the ‘70s, I was surprised by how many overt references to bluegrass there were: there’s a prominently placed photo of Clarence White in the later catalogs, and the first ever iteration of the catalog (1975) was plainly titled “Tokai Bluegrass Instruments.” At first I figured it was just a translation quirk, but it quickly became apparent that there was far more going on - and it started to make a lot more sense why Martin would want to team up with Tokai to start getting more of their instruments into Japan.
If you’re anything like me, you’d be a little surprised to find out that Japan has the second largest bluegrass scene in the world - behind the US, of course. It’s fairly common knowledge in the States that Japan has embraced America’s other musical exports like jazz, rock, and hip-hop, with plenty of Japanese musicians achieving huge success in those genres, even on this side of the pond. Bluegrass, though, is somewhat difficult to imagine thriving anywhere but here. It’s so intensely regional, community-driven, and just dang star-spangled-yeehaw-god-bless-these-United-States, it could put a tear in a patriot’s eye.
That, as it turns out, is not quite right. Not only is bluegrass popular in Japan, it’s thrived there for decades, and had a fascinating path to its current status.
The journey of flatpickin’, pluckin’, and fiddlin’ from the Appalachians to Mt. Fuji began, like all things Japanese/American cultural crossover, with the end of World War II.
Far East Network (FEN) was a military radio station created to provide American news and entertainment for the GIs and their families stationed in Japan and eastern Asia during and after the war. Once a day, FEN had a Country Music Hour, during which they played nothing but country and bluegrass. Of course, the Americans weren’t the only ones with radios, and plenty of Japanese were listening to the network alongside their occupiers.
For some young Japanese ears, bluegrass was a complete revelation. Brothers Yasushi and Hisashi Ozaki would secretly listen to FEN in all of its illicit, foreign glory, hiding in their closet to avoid scrutiny from their anti-American compatriots. But merely listening to the music wasn’t enough: they needed to make those sounds themselves. The brothers Ozaki built guitars from cigar boxes and old shamisen strings, until their mother (against the wishes of their father) sold her kimono to buy them a real guitar. Hisashi purchased an inexpensive mandolin shortly thereafter, and the brothers began to play for GIs in American Army Camps. Slowly, more and more secret bluegrass fans began revealing themselves among the Japanese, and in 1957 Yasushi and Hisashi officially formed the first recorded Japanese bluegrass band, the East Mountain Boys, named for a noted peak near their hometown of Kyoto.
In 1959 the East Mountain Boys played at what was then the most popular show in Japan, Tokyo’s annual Western Carnival, and the ascension of bluegrass’s popularity in the land of the rising sun truly began. Over the ‘60s, the genre continued to gain more and more listeners, existing as an independent subculture alongside other burgeoning Japanese musical scenes like surf and, later, psychedelia.
While it was certainly a genre of note, bluegrass wasn’t exactly mainstream - yet. That all changed in 1968, when a new band formed at a coffee house called Lost City in Kobe, Japan. Lost City was something of a bluegrass oasis, filled with old-time music fans and musicians. Six friends, who had been playing in a variety of different groups up until that point, decided to join forces and start something new. they called themselves Bluegrass 45, and they were destined to become the biggest thing in Japanese bluegrass since the first banjo arrived on the islands. They were tight, engaging on stage, and immensely talented, and very quickly amassed a sizable following. In 1970, Bluegrass 45 put together their first album, entirely self-funded and self-produced, called Run Mountain. The album made its way to the right sets of ears, and later that year Bluegrass 45 were “discovered” and signed by Dick Freeland of Rebel Records (on the recommendation of Canadian folk singer-songwriter Ian Tyson).
Bluegrass 45 toured the USA twice, in 1971 and ‘72, including performances at the Grand Ole Opry and at Bill Monroe’s Bean Blossom Festival in Indiana, and recorded three albums with Freeland (only two of which were released).
If you were listening to the right radio stations at the right time, you might’ve heard one of their songs like “Fuji Mountain Breakdown” (10/10 name, absolutely no notes), “Hamabe,” or their cover of “Bridge over Trouble Water.”
The members decided to go their separate ways upon returning to Japan in 1972, but the impact of Bluegrass 45 would last long beyond that initial run. Throughout the rest of the ‘70s, bluegrass attainable previously unimaginable popularity in Japan: bluegrass festivals popped up across the nation and countless new groups formed, following in the footsteps of their pioneering countrymen.
Japan’s impact on the genre wasn’t contained within the boundaries of the nation, either: Bluegrass 45’s banjo player Saburo “Sab” Watanabe Inoue became a prolific festival organizer and record producer, producing and releasing Tony Rice’s first solo album Guitar on his label Red Clay Records (the album was initially released in Japan, under the name got me a martin guitar). Sab-san would also go on to edit popular Japanese bluegrass magazine Moon Shiner for decades, and remained a towering figure in the scene throughout his life until he passed away in 2019.
As with all trends, bluegrass’s popularity in Japan did inevitably diminish somewhat, but although the wave of the ‘70s broke and ebbed back slightly, the genre has remained prevalent over the years, with young bluegrass and bluegrass-fusion (progressive bluegrass, jamgrass, etc.) bands popping up to this day. Bluegrass 45 have done several reunions since 1995, when they initially reunited following the Great Hanshin earthquake that devastated a significant portion of Kobe, and they (alongside the Ozaki brothers) are widely recognized as certified pioneers.
Sure, we in the States can claim bluegrass as our own, but we’re definitely not the only folks at the party. And that’s a beautiful thing.
-S.J. Feehan