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A live house (ライブハウス) is a Japanese live music club – a music venue featuring live music. The term is a Japanese coinage ( wasei eigo) and is mainly used in

East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both Geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The modern State (polity), states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. ...

. It most frequently refers to smaller venues, which may double as bars, especially featuring rock, jazz, blues, and folk music.

History

Live houses emerged in the early 1970s as part of the booming

indie Indie is a short form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Gaming *Independent video game development, video games created without financial backing from large companies *Indie game, any game (board ...

scene. At the beginning, they were kind of rock pubs, where dinner was accompanied by live music. By the end of the decade, chairs were removed and they adopted the format known today. The live house scene got a boost from the phenomena called Tokyo Rockers, a punk rock movement that started in 1978 by the opening of S-Ken studio venue. In the 80s, the

Japanese rock , sometimes abbreviated to , is rock music from Japan. Influenced by American and British rock of the 1960s, the first rock bands in Japan performed what is called Group Sounds, with lyrics almost exclusively in English. Folk rock band Happy ...

scene experienced the so-called band-boom stage, where amateur, indie artists, debuting at small live houses, were picked up by large record labels. The live houses were reduced to a stepping-stone to further one's career and the establishments became part of the music industry cycle, contrary to the original purpose of being unique underground venues for rebellious bands. One of

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

's oldest live houses is Shinjuku-Loft, that opened in 1971 as a jazz café, and Shinjuku-Ruido, that came into existence in 1972. One of the oldest live houses in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin, Keihanshin metropolitan area along wi ...

is Coffee House Jittoku (拾得, named after the Chinese monk Shide, "Foundling"), founded in 1973 in an old sake warehouse. In recent years, similar establishments started to appear in big cities in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

, China and many of them are also locally called "live houses." Due to the restrictions during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

in 2020 and 2021, the livelihood of many live houses was jeopardized and several had to shut down. Some live houses tried to organize crowd-funding projects to survive.

References

{{Authority control Music venues Japanese rock music