Society

Alternative Kyoto: how Japan's culture capital became a hotspot for live music

KYOTO, May 05 (nationalgeographic.com) - Beneath the surface of sedate geisha teahouses and hushed shrines, Kyoto is a hotbed for legendary live music — here, Japan's most unique, riotous acts are set free in the city's underground clubs, grungy dive bars and historic cafes.

The guidebooks speak of Kyoto with reverential awe: a city frozen in time, where robed monks sweep around hushed temples, and an opaque silence hangs above the perfect angles of Zen gardens. But there’s another side to the place — one that’s modern, rumbustious and irreverent to the core. By night, Kyoto is turned upside down. The city’s counterculture has long been brewed in the city’s music venues, locally known as ‘live houses’. In the 1970s, members of the Japanese Red Army, a female-led militant communist group who aimed to overthrow the monarchy, were said to have hidden out amid the swirling smoke and dark-wood walls of Zac Baran, one of Kyoto’s most famous jazz bars.

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