The Other Sound of '80s Japan

The influence of Japanese jazz fusion.

When most people romanticize what the sound of late-’70s and early-’80s Japan was, a lot of them will revert to city pop, the bustling genre of music made popular by digital algorithms. And while that particular genre did generate its fair share of hits and inimitable visuals (for example: It instantly calls to mind the art of Hisashi Eguchi), lately another genre has been coming back to the forefront.

In 1976, guitarist Issei Noro and bassist Tetsuo Sakurai began the first iteration of a band that would become known as Casiopea. The name is pronounced like the constellation Cassiopeia, but spelled differently due to the English version being pulled from Japanese book on constellations with a different translation.