From 1983 until it closed in 1999, I used to play guitar and mandolin with friends at a country bar in Akasaka, Tokyo, called Stonefield’s. Until his death a few years ago, the owner, Sam Ishihara, continued to perform regularly at country places around Tokyo, including some of those mentioned in the article. I occasionally sat in with him when the bar had a piano, which is the only instrument I play now.

Sam was unusual among Japanese country singers for writing his own songs in English. Earlier this year, one of his friends released some studio recordings Sam had made of his originals in 2002:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V_uncczgZ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDwUHp61X40

Last year, some of us got together again and did a few shows in Sam’s honor at a live house in Akabane. If the audience was representative of the current state of country music fandom in Japan, then the answer to the author’s question about “whether or not Tokyo’s country music underground can hold on for another generation” is “probably not.” At one show, at the age of sixty-seven, I was the youngest person there.