October 12, 2001

'Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan'

By NINA C. AYOUB

Scholarspeak postponed, a blast of word music opens Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Duke University Press). It's nighttime in Yokohama and E. Taylor Atkins riffs loose and free on Mix Dynamite, the band that showed him that "jazz could be real in Japan." It was its "sonic shrapnel" he says, that pierced his brain and his preconceptions.

For many readers, preconceptions won't be the issue. Even the notion of a jazzed-up Japan dating to the 1920s will be something new and

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