Victor Jazz Book
- Place of Publication: Yokohama, Japan
- Language: Japanese
- Date of Publication: 1949
- Introduction by: Stella Li
Victor Jazz Book consists of six issues published in Tokyo between April and October 1949. Each issue is 24 pages long with additional front and back matter, published by the Nippon Bikutā (Japan Victor Company), then the Japanese branch of the U.S. record label RCA Victor. The journal was probably established in the light of the resumption of business between the Japanese branch and the U.S. headquarters in 1949, as was briefly mentioned in the first article of the first issue. However, the journal did not appear to continue after the sixth issue. Why the publication was terminated remains unclear.
The journal focuses on jazz activities in the U.S. and Japan, with particular attention to U.S. jazz recordings and star jazzmen, including established figures such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and the Dorsey brothers, as well as rising bebop stars such as Dizzy Gillespie. Regular columns include album and band reviews, discussion about jazz and movies, and commentary on radio programs. Reports on Japanese jazz activities highlight radio broadcasts of jazz music, including music shows on WVTR (the U.S. Armed Force Radio station in Japan), and live and recording concerts transmitted on NHK. Significant space is given to discussions about the U.S. jazz scene and the Japanese access to it, while attention to Japanese musicians or original compositions is rather sparse.
Regular contributors to the journal are a group of well-known Japanese jazz critics, including Nogawa Kōbun 野川香文, Noguchi Hisamitsu 野口久光, Muraoka Tei 村岡貞, Yui Shōichi 油井正一, Kawano Ryūji 河野隆次, Oka Toshio 岡俊雄, and Futaba Jūzaburō 双葉十三郎. Of interest are the article by Kawano on Gillespie and modern jazz (June 1949), the roundtable on women jazz singers (July 1949), and the commentary by Uchida Eiichi (内田英一) on the relations between light music and jazz (June and July 1949).
The editor of the journal was Ishizaka Nori’ichirō 石坂範一郎, niece of the Japanese business magnate Ishizaka Taizō 石坂泰三. Before joining his uncle’s company, Toshiba, in 1954 to start its gramophone business (which became Toshiba EMI), Ishizaka had been leading Victor’s department of Western music since the pre-war era. Ishizaka is best known for his directorship at Toshiba EMI in the 1960s, particularly his involvement in realizing the Beatles’s groundbreaking concert in Japan in 1966.1 Although he did not author any article in Victor Jazz Book, later in his life, Ishizaka translated Roland Gelatt’s book The Fabulous Phonograph: 1877–1977 to Japanese. Ishizaka’s translation was published in Japan by the Ongaku no Tomo Sha in 1981.
This RIPM Index was produced from copies of the journal held by the Gordon W. Prange Collection at the University of Maryland, College Park.
1 Satō, Gō. Uerukamu Bitoruzu: Senkyuhyakurokujurokunen no budokan koen o jitsugen saseta bijinesumantachi. Tōkyō: Rittomyujikku, 2018.