An introduction to the history of bluegrass music in Japan
The award-winning film Far Western, directed by James Payne, provides a very entertaining introduction and overview of the history and evolution of traditional American country music in Japan, including bluegrass. Some of the musicians featured in this documentary include Toru Mitsui, Miya Ishida, Juta Sagai, Ryukichi Hayakawa, Masuo Sasabe, Charlie Nagatani, Yoshie Sakamoto, Shintaro Ishida, and Yasuchi Ozaki.
You can learn more about this film at the distributor’s website.
DVDs are available. The film is also available for rental or purchase on the Vimeo streaming service.
Here are some informative deleted scenes that did not make it into the film:
In this short excerpt of an interview, the late Dr. Denis Gainty discusses the release of the first bluegrass recording in Japan, in 1958. It was The East Mountain Boys (The Ozaki brothers). This was around the same time that the first bluegrass LP was released in the United States, by Folkways. Dr. Gainty was a historian of modern Japan at Georgia State University. He was a musician himself, and spent time in Japan and was working on a book about the history of bluegrass music in Japan when he died in 2017.
Here are links to two terrific articles written by Denis Gainty. One appeared in No Depression magazine, and the other one was published by This Land Press.
In another deleted scene from the documentary film Far Western, Kazuhira Inaba talks about how the love of country and bluegrass music has brought his family together and continues to be a source of joy across generations. His story shares some similarities with others who are featured in the film, such as Yoshie Sakamoto and the Ishidas. In this clip the Inaba family performs the Stephen Foster song "Angelina Baker."
Kazuhira Inaba hosts an annual festival (“Kaz Camp”) and has assisted and befriended many bluegrass artists from the U.S., and hosted some at his home when they have visited Japan, including Butch Robins and Mike Compton. He worked with the group Crying Uncle when they toured Japan in 2023. You can read more about Kaz on the Performers page of this website, and enjoy many videos here and visit his website here.
A film made for public television (PBS) in the U.S. called “Big Family: The History of Bluegrass Music” includes some comments from famous bluegrass musicians describing their experiences playing in Japan, and some of their thoughts about the international reach of the music and some of the history of the genre in Japan:
Some quotes from the film Big Family:
J.D. Crowe: “We went to Japan in 1975. We were over there for like ten days and I think we played eight concerts, and out of those eight, every one of them were sold out. It was just encore after encore. They wouldn’t let us quit. We had to come back three or four times. I mean, that was a great feeling, you know. I really didn’t want to come back to the US after playing in Japan.”
Jerry Douglas: "Bluegrass in Japan, at that point was at its peak, and I remember running to the car after the concert and people trying to rip our shirts off and things like that. It was like real "rock god" mentality, you know, over there. It was a strange thing that I haven't really had happened to me since.”
Blake Williams: Bill [Monroe] was huge in Japan. They love bluegrass over there. There’d be people waiting for him at the airport.
Jeff Hanna: When we toured Japan, the second time, I think 1974, Vassar came along with us, Vassar Clements. When we got off the airplane, they were like, it’s funny, this has really only happened to us really once or twice ever, but they treated us like The Beatles. We’re walking down the ramp, there’s these people with placards and screaming teenagers and off to the side is a whole lot of young Japanese music fans with Vassar’s picture on it.
The video below, like the film Big Family, was produced by Kentucky Educational Television. In this 7-minute video you will see and hear comments from two members of the famous Japanese bluegrass band Bluegrass 45: Saburo “Sab” Inoue and Tsuyoshi “Josh” Otsuka. Also included are comments from Michio Higashi, John Lawless—editor and co-founder of Bluegrass Today, Nobuyuki Taguchi—the owner of the famous Rocky Top music venue in Ginza, Tokyo, and banjo players Takumi Kodera, J.D. Crowe, and Alison Brown.
In 2021, Bluegrass Unlimited magazine published a series of 16 articles covering the historic 14-week U.S. tour by Bluegrass 45 in 1971. You can read those articles here.
This series of articles was followed by a podcast audio interview with Akira Otsuka, the mandolin player for the Japanese bluegrass band Bluegrass 45. Akira briefly talks about that tour, but also discussed what he and the other band members have been doing since that historic tour fifty years ago. This interview was originally posted in September, 2021.
Here is a radio story from October 2016, reported by Naomi Gingold for National Public Radio (NPR) in the U.S.
This radio story can also be accessed via the following link, which also provides a transcript of the text, and a picture of the group Bluegrass Police playing at Rocky Top, and a picture of the Ozaki brothers, who formed Japan’s first bluegrass duo, the East Mountain Boys, in 1957:
Darcy Whiteside, from the city of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, is a member of the bluegrass band The Bix Mix Boys. In addition to his many excellent tutorials, interviews, and performance videos, he also provides some excellent historical information about bluegrass music on his YouTube channel. In the following three short videos he provides some great insights about some of the early history of bluegrass in Japan.
Michio Higashi
Michio Higashi is seen here playing at Thumbs Up in Yokohama on December 15, 2022, alongside banjoist Takumi Kodera, and bassist Akihide Teshima.
The following paragraph about Michio Higashi is an excerpt from the book “Popular Music in Japan” written by Toru Mitsui, Professor Emeritus of English and Music at Kanazawa University. Pages 155-156.
Professor Mitsui passed away on February 19, 2023. He was a musician and a scholar. You can read about his life in music in this remembrance by Professor Neil Rosenberg.
“…[another] friend of mine, Michio Higashi, grew up in Tokyo as a son of a prosperous couple born in Vancouver, Canada. As a nineteen-year-old student, he led a college band called the Ozark Mountaineers and was fortunate enough to have been funded by his father to tour around the United States. He travelled around America in the summer of 1961, staying with the late Mrs Hank Williams for about a week in Nashville, when it was just a dream for most Japanese to go abroad. He learned a lot there, especially the playing techniques of bluegrass instruments. The Japanese pioneers had learned to play through listening to records, but without any visual models their technique and handling of the instruments were sometimes very imaginative. Higashi made a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” with a guitar for which he borrowed a capo from Earl Scruggs. (It was on 7 May 1960 that Yoshio Ōno, a yodeler and a banjoist who debuted in Japan by signing with Nippon Columbia in 1957, performed on the Opry stage with Flatt and Scruggs as the first Japanese who had ever been given an opportunity to perform there (Isaji 1988).) The story of Higashi’s adventure was published in the second issue of Moon Shiner in 1983.”
I met Professor Neil Rosenberg at the 2023 IBMA World of Bluegrass Business Conference. He shared with me an article that he wrote for Bluegrass Unlimited in 1967, (“Nine Reasons for Getting Acquainted with a Japanese Bluegrass Fan”) in which he describes how, in the 1960s, he learned that bluegrass fans in Japan had access to many recordings of U.S. bluegrass artists that were not available in the U.S. He describes his efforts to get copies of some of those recordings. Professor Rosenberg graciously gave me permission to make that 1967 article available here.