How Japan’s Listening Bar Culture Conquered the World

“Listening bars are a reaction to people wanting to really re-engage with music,” Paul Noble, founder of Spiritland (one of the first venues in the UK to adopt the Japanese concept) tells me.

The idea dates back to the 1920s, when ongaku kissa, or ‘music cafes,’ began playing classical and jazz music, both as an escape from urban life and as part of a wider fascination with Western culture. By the 1950s, post-war Japan faced a scarcity of records a...