Places named for (J. S.) Bach in Japan
From concert halls to hotels to coffee shops, the great composer casts his shadow
My colleague Malcolm Foster and I just returned from visiting the “Bach Hall” in Kami-machi (formerly Nakaniida). We’re making our rounds interviewing for a forthcoming article in “Japan’s Pipe Organ Boom,” and wanted to visit this concert hall in the middle of the rice-paddies.
It makes good sense to name a music hall after Bach, who was, after all (according to our Bach Hall guide), “the father of music.” In light of this most obvious of eponyms, I was curious to see what other elements of Japanese geography bore the name of the great 18th century German composer.
Music
The most similar institution is the “Bach Grove” (バッハの森) in Ibaraki prefecture, not far north of Tokyo. Tsukuba university professor of Old Testament Tomo Ishida helped found this music school and cultural center in 1985 with private funding. The original vision was to appreciate church music, particularly its biblical roots, among people gathered from all confessions. The only requirement for participation is genuine interest in the music of Bach and others like him. It features an intimate concert hall with a beautiful Arendt pipe organ, and seminar space as well as a music library. Classes and concerts are held throughout the year.
Unsurprisingly, there are quite a number of music schools and rehearsal studios named for Bach. In my cursory and unscientific search I was easily able to identify at least four of them in the Tokyo area alone:
Hazuki Music School, bachmusic.info, in Higashi-kurume, Saitama
Bach House, in Toshima-ku, Tokyo
Studio Bach, in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Bach Academy, in Saitama City
Continuing the obvious musical theme is the hi-fi shop in Aichi prefecture (not far from Nagoya). Its name is an obvious English play on words: Audio Play-Bach (プレイバッハ) :
Food and Drink
Here we start to venture farther afield. There seem to be not a few coffee shops named after Bach. According to my friends, coffee and classical music (with a side-order of classical jazz) go together like bread and butter (or a bush-warbler and a plum tree, 梅に鶯). Further, Leipzig was one of the first coffee towns, with the elder Bach a cornerstone of the Café Zimmerman entertainment as director of the Collegium Musicum. So there’s a kind of sense here:
Café Bach, Tokyo, Taito
Bach Coffee Roasters, Tokyo, Shinagawa
Pâtisserie Bach-Picasso, Kagoshima
The latter is a little more removed from Bach proper, and trends toward other high-aesthetic overtones.
This matches with another category yet more distant: bars and izakayas. I’m not sure what the connection to J.S. Bach is, but there are quite a number of them:
Dougenzaka Bach, Shibuya
Izakaya Bach, Roppongi
Izakaya Bach, Chiyoda
Aesthetics
I was able to locate a couple oyet more distant Bach enterprises. “J. S.” is neither mentioned nor implied, but Bach is certainly there. Again, I’m not sure what the connection between Bach and massage is; perhaps a personal one?
Bach Shiatsu massage, Kichijoji
And a design studio specializing in bookstores:
Bach-Inc, Tokyo, Minato
The Grand Bach Hotels
The most direct and recent call upon Bach’s musical renown and cultural cache comes from a new chain of luxurious hotels from the Greenhouse Group. They have been branded the Hotel GrandBach, with locations in Tokyo’s swanky Ginza; getaway destination Atami (called “Crescendo”); Kyoto; and finally Sendai.
I learned of them from their advertisement in the recent Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ) program. Upon investigation, I discovered Hotel GrandBach had recently entered into a partnership with the BCJ. I’m not sure what this entails—probably mostly sponsorship. The brand is devoted to “providing healing and inspiration through food and music.”
Since we were passing through Sendai on our way back from the Bach Hall, we decided to drop in, and discovered this reception desk, fully ornamented with a pipe organ. Perhaps it works, perhaps it doesn’t, but it makes quite an impression when the elevator doors open up to your musical and aesthetic retreat. It’s not pipe organ music in the entryway, though, but the über-famous “Sheep may safely graze.”
Bach continues at the bar, which wraps around the organ console. The chandeliers are made of old musical instruments.
Some reflections
Some of these allusions to Bach are rather tenuous (Bach Shiatsu?), but they attest to the composer’s widespread renown. The invocation of Bach’s name, moreover, clearly signals class, a certain culture, even luxury. Bach, from these nominal associations, is a high aesthete, and clients gain not only a calming musical presence, but proximity to greatness.
There’s also an element of “occidentalism” in these names. For as native as Bach has become (see this former post ), he remains a Westerner, to be adopted on Japanese terms.