Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2010

Illustration by Sarah Noorbakhsh

In late 2009, the crowd fell into a reverent silence as Maki Asakawa took the stage at Shinjuku’s Pit Inn. Clad in one of her signature black velvet dresses and inscrutable shades, the 67-year-old singer remarked, before launching into a pensive set, “It’s been 41 years, and the venue has changed, but I still feel the same.” Asakawa was referring to her famed series of 1968 performances in the now-defunct Sasori-za, the Shinjuku stomping ground of the likes of writers Shuji Terayama and Yukio Mishima. Those shows represented a watershed moment, proving that not only could a Japanese vocalist do jazz, she could bend it, making it something avant-garde, original and, yes, Japanese. As we watched her toss her microphone aside and belt “Summertime” to the back of the packed house, the Pit Inn audience, myself included, could hardly have imagined that this was to be her swan song. Less than a month later, Asakawa would be dead from heart disease.

Maki Asakawa, January 27, 1942-January 17, 2010.