This book, the only history of free jazz in Japan, has been reprinted many times in Japan and is finally available to readers overseas in English translation. From its earliest stirrings in the 1960s until it reached international recognition in the 1970s and after, free jazz in Japan is a unique music that has found its perfect scribe. Soejima Teruto was a writer who fell in love with a music and devoted his life to it as promoter, critic, label owner, tour organizer, and much more. All new photos in this edition, none used from the original Japanese volume. Introduction by Otomo Yoshihide. If you like free jazz and experimental music at all, if you like the unique voices of Japan at all, this book will open your ears to many sounds you haven't heard, or heard of, before.

Japanese free jazz critic Teruto Soejima passed away on 12 July 2014, at the age of 83. Since the late 1960s he had been a tireless booster of free jazz in Japan. In 1969 together with Masayuki Takayanagi, Masahiko Togashi and Masahiko Satoh, he helped found the New Jazz Hall, Tokyo’s first dedicated free jazz venue. Unusually, Soejima viewed promotion and production as essential components of his job as a critic, and he was closely involved in record production and arranging concert tours. He enjoyed a particularly long and fruitful relationship with the Moers Festival in Germany, where he arranged appearances by over 130 Japanese free musicians between 1977 and 2006. He was equally committed to promoting Japanese tours by Western free jazz musicians (particularly those from Russia and Korea), including Peter Kowald and Christian Marclay.