Music from the Next Room

He was born as the war was ending and bred in this east Tokyo neighbourhood. His father, who also ran a record store, was the adopted son of a man across the river who made metal parts and sold records too He discovered rock and roll during middle school, when a friend who was the son of a Buddhist priest played him a record by Fats Domino. I started dropping in about seven years ago. He sits at the back on the right, his big glasses and big face emerging from behind a tower of CDs when a customer opens the door. High on the wall is a black and white photograph of John Coltrane on stage. His amplifier can play only one pair of speakers at a time, so he usually turns up the volume outside on the street, and lets the music filter in through the glass. Nostalgia colours his selections, but the shop is also a doorway to another sort of present, because everything here defies the passing years. He burned CDs for me, like the out-of-print album by Dorothy Ashby on the solo harp which he always played at an engulfing volume. I initially dismissed it as corny, then came to hear it as exquisite and heavenly as it enveloped the passersby. Listening from inside, Mr Yoshida once said he liked to hear music from a distance, as if it were coming from the next room, where people are enjoying themselves, carrying on. Takashi Yoshida 1944-2020