First propping up in the 1920s before being expunged during Japan’s Imperial era, the post-war relaxation of Western culture, coupled with the boom in high-fidelity audio gear, meant the proliferation of jazu kissa bars exploded throughout the ’70s, offering musos and jass enthusiasts a chance to immerse themselves with John Coltrane of Miles Davis with dedicated attention.

In ’74, long before he found fame as a successful writer, author and essayist, Haruki Murakami founded and ran the Tokyo jazz bar Peter Cat. Named after his and his wife’s pet and situated in the city’s western Kokubunji, the couple handled everything, fuelled by a simple but powerful passion for jazz. They cooked, cleaned, served drinks, hosted live music, and played a selection of his 3,000 jazz records well into the night.

This experience proved formative, as the years managing Peter Cat would influence his later literature. Reflecting on the principles that aided his creative endeavours on an agony uncle website in 2015, Murakami mused, “My idea was that it was okay not to be liked by all the customers: if three out of ten people liked my bar and one of them came back, that was enough, and the bar was empirically viable. It’s the same with a novel: if three out of ten people like it and one of them reread it, that’s fine. That’s basically how I think. It’s a lot easier when you think that way. I can do what I want when I want.”

Running the bar wasn’t easy. Routinely running into debt and unable to afford the heating bills, Murakami would often cuddle Peter the cat for warmth. Explaining to The New York Times why he endured such trials, he remarked, “We had records playing constantly, and young musicians performing live jazz on weekends. I kept this up for seven years. Why? For one simple reason: It enabled me to listen to jazz from morning to night.”

After the success of his first novel Hear the Wind Sing, he eventually sold Peter Cat and pursued writing full-time, going on to write ’87’s acclaimed Norwegian Wood and ’09’s 1Q84, voted the greatest piece of Japanese literature during the country’s ‘Heisei era’ by The Asahi Shimbun. Now, an Italian restaurant called Wine Bistro Amphora inside contains a framed nod to the former Peter Cat, a small gesture that recognises the site’s important jazz heritage.

There’s still hope for Peter Cat’s return, however. Hinting at jazu kissa’s beckoning allure in his old age and having now accrued over 10,000 records, he stated: “When I retire from writing, I’d like to open a jazz club in Aoyama. If so, I’d wear a white jacket, like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (I wonder if Comme des Garçons sells such things?). I would sit at the bar, sip a Laphroig and say to the pianist, ‘I told you not to play that tune, Sam’. But actually, running a jazz club is not that carefree. I still can’t get out of the habit of counting the headcount and calculating the fee when I was going to a jazz club. It’s an exhausting problem.”

from https://faroutmagazine.co.uk