Hatano Jazz Band (Japanese: Hatano Orchestra ハタノ・オーケストラ) was a Japanese band founded by graduates from

Tokyo Music School or is the most prestigious art school in Japan. Located in Ueno Park, it also has facilities in Toride, Ibaraki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, and Kitasenju and Adachi, Tokyo. The university has trained renowned artists in the fields of painting, scul ...

in 1912. The leader of the band was Fukutarō Hatano who went on to become a songwriter. Although some described it as the first

Japanese jazz Japanese jazz is jazz played by Japanese musicians and connected to Japan or Japanese culture. The term often refers to the history of jazz in Japan, which has the largest proportion of jazz fans in the world, according to some estimates. Attempts ...

band, Hatano himself stated that he had "never had much to do with jazz". Hatano (cornet and violin) co-founded the band with a cellist, banjoist, accordionist and drummer, and it played aboard the trans-Pacific ship, the ''Chiyo Maru''.Lash, Max E. (23 December 1964) "Jazz in Japan". ''The Japan Times''. p. 5. On stopovers in San Francisco, the musicians were exposed to different forms of music, which they took back to Japan. "Within five years the Hatano orchestra had 12 members, mostly string players." Hatano recalled the dance music they played in Japan in 1921: "we played fox trot, one-step, and two-step scores, which I'd bought in America, as they were. Nobody knew anything about ad-libbing yet".

History

* 1912: The band performed on the ''Chiyo Maru'' steamship from

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. * 1915: They played accompaniments to

silent films A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, whe ...

. * 1918: The band became popular and played during film intermissions. * 1922: Fukutarō Hatano organized a larger orchestra.

References

Bibliography * Japanese jazz ensembles Musical groups established in 1912 Musical groups from Tokyo 1912 establishments in Japan {{Japan-band-stub