Thank You, Nameless People and Scenes

From the radio while driving, modern jazz rings out pleasantly through the car.

Stopped at a red light, the people of Asakusa crossing the crosswalk are steeped in the jazz’s tones, and—strangely—everyone looks cool and wonderful; it’s a mystery.

The effect that music holds is great: by adding the effect of hearing to sight, the emotion of what you see and its whole worldview change.

If enka had been playing from the radio in this spot, my feelings might not have risen especially, and I might have taken it as an utterly ordinary everyday scene.

To begin with, it was my besotted fixed notion—that music developed within America’s Black culture is cool—that made me feel that way; if a foreigner sightseeing in Asakusa saw this scene with enka in the background, the chic old men and women living downtown would look like “THE JAPAN,” and they’d be drunk on the charm of a foreign land.