In recent years, once-hard-to-find Japanese ambient masterpieces—such as Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green and Midori Takada's Through the Looking Glass—have experienced a dramatic rise in popularity. Lewis Gordon delves into this trend, interviewing collectors and record shop owners from the United States, Britain, and Japan who have fueled this growing fascination.
During the 1980s in Japan, a number of musicians quietly created works that today would be categorized as ambient or new age. Forget the often ridiculed, mass-produced albums of whale songs and gentle waves, or the polished indigenous sounds of healing music. Hiroshi Yoshimura, Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa, and others produced meticulously crafted, minimalist pieces—albums that are only now receiving the recognition they deserve. Unlike Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra, who achieved some international fame, these artists remained largely unknown outside Japan. Their recordings attracted a small but devoted audience in the 1980s and 1990s, but little more. Against the backdrop of Japan's extraordinary economic expansion, the music of this era both benefited from the new wealth and reacted against its downsides.
The former obscurity of these musicians is now changing. Midori Takada's 1983 album Through the Looking Glass amassed millions of streams on YouTube before being reissued by Palto Flats, transforming from a collector's rarity into a modern classic of the streaming era. Light in the Attic is working on an archival series of Japanese music, which includes a compilation focused on the new age and ambient sounds of 1980s Japan. The compilation was curated by Spencer Doran of Visible Cloaks, whose well-known mixes for Root Strata have significantly broadened the audience for Japanese ambient music. Doran has now partnered with Root Strata's Maxwell August Croy to reissue selected works by Hiroshi Yoshimura on their label Empire of Signs, starting with Yoshimura's debut album Music for Nine Post Cards.
Yoshimura's pivotal beatless album Green, released in 1986 on Air Records, stands at the heart of both 1980s Japanese ambient music and its current revival. Similar to Takada's Through the Looking Glass, Green gained renewed popularity through a CD rip uploaded to YouTube. Recorded amid the chaos of a rapidly transforming Tokyo, the album's serene calm provided an escape from the din of heavy trucks, jackhammers, and clanging metal that dominated the city's soundscape. Its Japanese cover—a beautifully shot image of a schlumbergera houseplant—reflects the purity of the music, making its long obscurity even more puzzling. The album's composure is a stark contrast to Yoshimura's earlier involvement with the Tokyo Fluxus scene and the seminal improvisational group Taj Mahal Travellers, though their outdoor performance style would echo in the sonic themes of his later solo work.
Individuals like Chee Shimizu gradually began to uncover records such as Green from that period. After a recession hit Japan about ten years ago, Shimizu lost his main income from graphic design. Following his wife's advice, he launched his own online record shop, Organic Music, searching for records that could generate income and also enhance his DJ sets. 'When I first started playing new age and ambient in my DJ sets, nobody cared, but that changed six or seven years ago,' Shimizu writes via email. 'Some close friends in Europe were also interested in this kind of music and helped bring it to a global audience.' Shimizu credits Amsterdam's Red Light Records and the Music From Memory label as key players in sparking interest in these albums.
Norio Sato, who runs the Osaka record store Rare Groove, says that Music From Memory's Jamie Tiller contacted him directly before the trend took off. 'After that, some European DJs and collectors sent me their want lists for Japanese new age and ambient music, but there were many records I didn't know. They introduced me to some incredible Japanese albums.' Dubby, a former coworker of Shimizu at Organic Music who now owns Ondas record shop, tells a similar tale of growing interest in Japanese ambient music starting about six or seven years ago.
Spencer Doran depended on Japanese locals like Shimizu, Norio, and Dubby to discover these records and ship them to the United States. The first Yoshimura album he encountered was AIR, created for the cosmetics company Shiseido. The record was sprayed with fragrance and sealed in a bag, with the music intended to evoke one of Shiseido's scents. 'For years, it was just a typical dollar-bin record,' Doran says. 'It completely blew my mind, and here was this guy nobody had ever heard of—at least not in the US—so I told my friend, "If you ever come across any of his records, buy them and trade them to me."' Within a year, Doran received Green, Surround, and Music for Nine Postcards—albums that represent the peak of Yoshimura's creative work in the 1980s.
Brian Eno's beatless compositions from the mid-1970s serve as a clear reference point for Western listeners, but the Japanese artists' work diverges in important aspects. Yoshimura described his music as 'environmental music'—the Japanese equivalent of 'ambient'—but with a different framing. While Eno crafted ambient music for an imaginary setting on Music for Airports, Yoshimura and his peers composed for actual, physical spaces.
Yoshimura's 1986 album Surround came about through corporate sponsorship from Misawa Home, intended to be played in their show homes. His debut record, Music for Nine Postcards, was created as a response to the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. In the CD liner notes, Yoshimura asks, 'How would this album sound if it were played here?' Tragically, the final piece he composed was for another institution—the Museum of Modern Art at Kamakura & Hayama—before he succumbed to cancer in 2003. Like Eno, Yoshimura drew on Erik Satie's concept of furniture music. Eno directly referenced the French composer on Discreet Music, while Satsuki Shibano's 1983 album Erik Satie (France 1866-1925) made the link explicit in Japan.
Both Shibano's album and Yoshimura's first record were part of the Wave Notation series on Sound Process, a label founded by Satoshi Ashikawa. Initially created to release Music for Nine Postcards, the venture quickly evolved into a sound-design consulting firm. In 1982, it released Ashikawa's own album Still Way—a record of cold, beautiful stillness. The liner notes, written by Ashikawa himself, read like a manifesto for his and Yoshimura's concept of environmental music. Drawing on the work of Canadian sound ecologist Murray Schafer, Ashikawa writes: 'Background music, which is supposed to create “atmosphere,” is far too excessive. In our current situation, we find that visual design is well taken care of in certain areas and spaces, but sound design is completely neglected. It is necessary to treat sound and music with the same daily necessity as architecture, interior design, food, or the air we breathe.' Sound Process later released a book on Harold Budd, a pianist and collaborator of Eno, further strengthening the connection between the emerging Western ambient scene and its Japanese equivalent.
Although these albums were intended for specific locations, they also strongly evoked a sense of place, aligning them with Eno's work. In an Arena documentary about the ambient pioneer, he said, 'A piece of music becomes real for me when it seems to become a place, when I can sort of feel what the temperature and light and colors would be.' Green, brimming with lush vegetation and humidity, captures this perfectly. Norio comments, 'These tracks are simple—just clear synthesizers and beautiful melodies—but they convey a magnificent image.' The influence of Eno is visible in other records as well. Inoyama Land's 1983 album Danzindan-Pojidon features cover art similar to the cartographic designs of Music for Airports and The Plateaux of Mirror, while its sound echoes Eno's 1975 album Another Green World, with weightless synths and gently plucked guitars evoking an idyllic scene.
Many of these Japanese records display a deep sensitivity to the natural elements, a characteristic that distinguishes them from their European counterparts. Yoshimura's Music for Nine Postcards harnessed the essence of air, especially in tracks like 'Clouds.' Using a keyboard and Fender Rhodes, Yoshimura wove delicate, gossamer melodies over a softly shimmering bed of synthesizers. Water also recurs throughout his work, notably on the albums Pier, Loft, and Surround. He was not alone in exploring such elemental themes. Haruomi Hosono released Mercuric Dance in 1985, an album imbued with metallic textures. Like Yoshimura, Hosono didn't limit himself to a single element: over the course of Mercuric Dance, the metal transitions into water and finally becomes enveloped by wind and air. Composer and percussionist Yas-Kaz released Jomon-Sho in 1985, another album alive with elemental interplay but with a stronger focus on Japanese folklore.
For Allen Wooton, known as Deadboy, it is Green's depiction of the natural world that resonates most strongly, even though Yoshimura used the Yamaha DX7—a synthesizer often associated with artificiality—to create the album. 'The DX7 is not a natural-sounding instrument at all; it's very digital. The way he can make something sound so much like it comes from nature with that instrument is amazing,' he says. 'It sounds like someone who has studied the natural world and has been able to somehow replicate its aesthetic.' Wooton, unlike Doran, discovered the album about three years ago through Sounds of the Dawn, an influential blog that highlights new age and ambient music. Finding Green was part of his growing interest in ambient music, which led him to found New Atlantis, a Sunday afternoon event focused on calmer sounds, contrasting with the club-oriented tracks he produces as Deadboy.
The naturalism Wooton identifies in Green, along with the elemental qualities of other records from that period, partly arose as a reaction against the 'miracle' real estate bubble of the mid-to-late 1980s. Rapid development and urbanization swept across Japan, with Tokyo—the hub of the growing financial sector—experiencing much of the boom. Iconic structures like the NEC Super Tower and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building rose in the capital. Spiral, another landmark building of the era, was commissioned by the lingerie manufacturer Wacoal but primarily served as an arts space for public use—another example of the corporate sponsorship that Yoshimura himself experienced. 'A big current within Japanese music of that era is that it's sort of this escape from the city,' says Doran. 'Japanese culture has this big connection with the natural world, and it's something that really gets lost in contemporary city life. Tokyo is a city that's very stressful, claustrophobic, and overbearing. There's this need for a respite from the situation, and I think that's a reason why a lot of this music existed at the time—it was necessary to modern life.'
In Japan, popular environmentalism developed in opposition to the development boom, though the government appeared receptive to such concerns. After an industrial pollution crisis in the 1960s and two oil crises in the 1970s, the Japanese government was compelled to address these issues head-on—with arguable success—by establishing the Environmental Agency in 1971. The Nature Conservation Law was passed in 1972, aimed at protecting Japan's natural environment. Against the concrete and steel of the 1980s, Yoshimura's Green emerges as a product of unrestrained naturalism. It might also be considered the sonic equivalent of shinrin-yoku, or forest-bathing—taking short walks in a forest for health benefits—an initiative launched by officials at the Forest Agency of Japan in 1982. Green resonates with this practice and the environmentalism that preceded it, offering something close to optimism, even utopianism, capable of rising above the grime of contemporary Tokyo.
'It definitely has this very futuristic feeling to it,' says Doran. 'It's almost an idealized version of what that kind of music could be. And it's executed with such precision but grace at the same time.' For Wooton, the album conjures a powerful image of an imagined Japan. 'It's very simple, stripped down—there's nothing unnecessary. It just reminds me of bamboo fields or what I imagine them to look like having never seen one.' This may help explain why the record is striking a chord with so many listeners today. Come across it on YouTube and you are transported—Green offers a moment of absolute, organic stillness. As urban development continues largely unchecked and the gap between us and nature grows, Green taps into a primal longing, allowing us to immerse ourselves in a pristine wilderness.
There may be a lingering concern that Western audiences fetishize or exoticize Japanese ambient music. Wooton says Green puts him 'very much in a peaceful state,' while Doran remarks, 'It has this undiluted, melodic interplay going on. It's very pure.' But these sentiments are echoed by many in Japan itself. Dubby notes that, to his ears and understanding, Green captures a particular aspect of Japanese life: 'Traditional culture is extremely important to us, especially the idea of Wabi-Sabi and its concept of beauty.' This philosophy centers on the aesthetics of impermanence and transience. Yoshimura, sometimes called 'cloudman'—his music drifting through the environment—may well capture that fleeting beauty. 'His music is part of the atmosphere,' Dubby concludes. Perhaps Norio puts it best when he simply says, 'Green gives me healing, peace, and infinite possibilities.'
Lewis Gordon is a freelance writer. You can follow him on Twitter.
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