Masabumi Kikuchi – Poo-Sun (1970)

By Rafi Mercer

There are albums that exist at the edge of recognition, the kind collectors whisper about, passed like talismans between those who understand that jazz was not only an American invention but an international conversation. Masabumi Kikuchi’s Poo-Sun, recorded in 1970, is one of those records. A Japanese pianist who would go on to collaborate with Gil Evans, Terumasa Hino, and Elvin Jones, Kikuchi was already restless by the time he made Poo-Sun. This was no apprentice work. It was a statement that Japanese jazz had found a voice both rooted in the modal experiments of the 1960s and entirely its own.

The record opens in modal territory, clearly indebted to the legacy of Coltrane and Tyner, yet what unfolds is not imitation. Kikuchi’s touch is distinctive: light but incisive, harmonies shifting like clouds across a humid Tokyo afternoon. Terumasa Hino’s trumpet burns and yearns, cutting through the ensemble with molten lyricism, while the rhythm section swings with both elasticity and force. There is an urgency here, but also a patience — Kikuchi knew when to let the air speak.

Listening on vinyl is transformative. The piano is captured with grain, the kind of analogue warmth that makes each chord resonate in the room rather than on the record. The bass thrums, the drums snap, and the trumpet lines slice the air with conviction. On a good system, Poo-Sun is less an album than a chamber of energy, a dialogue unfolding at human scale. Played in a listening bar, it is exactly the kind of music that silences chatter without demanding it, the kind of music that changes posture and breathing.

What makes the album remarkable is its balance of tradition and experiment. It honours modal jazz but pushes it towards abstraction. It carries Japanese melodic sensibilities without reducing them to cliché. It is cosmopolitan, rooted, searching. In Kikuchi’s playing you hear not only homage but aspiration, the sense of a musician who knows the centre but is committed to exploring the margins.

Over fifty years later, Poo-Sun remains elusive on the collector’s market but timeless in sound. Drop the needle and you hear not just a rare record, but a declaration: Japanese jazz is not a copy. It is its own.

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