A Word for Listening

By Rafi Mercer

Someone asked me today what kissa means. The word is simple enough in Japanese: it comes from kissaten (喫茶店), which literally translates to “tea-drinking shop.” In the post-war years, kissaten were cafés where people could gather, drink coffee, and listen.

But over time, the word grew a second life. In Japan, jazz kissa became a world of its own — small bars dedicated not to live bands but to records played on carefully tuned systems. Spaces where the act of listening was the ritual. The turntable became the stage, the selector the guide, the record the performance.

To walk into a jazz kissa is to enter a room built for sound. The lights are low, the whisky is poured with care, and the speakers carry music as though it were happening in real time. Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Nina Simone — their voices still alive, their notes still immediate.

So yes, kissa may mean “café,” but in practice it has come to mean much more: a place where listening matters, where the world slows down enough for music to unfold. A word for presence, for patience, for sound itself.

Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe here, or click here to read more.