Seventies Japanese Jazz

I found Japanese jazz from the seventies by accident—Sadao Watanabe, session players backing singers I’d never heard of—and it rewired what I thought the music could do. There’s a formal precision underneath something loose and exploratory, Western sophistication filtered through Japanese restraint and taste. The production is warm and muffled by today’s standards, and it sounds like it doesn’t care if anyone’s listening. I can’t stop reaching for those records.