It was not yet 8pm on a weekday evening but Publion, a small, upstairs bar down a side street near Tokyo’s Shimokitazawa station, was already almost full.
Most of the patrons were carrying musical instruments: fiddles, tin whistles, uilleann pipes, bodhráns and a harp and by the time the music started there were about 20 of them.
This was a traditional Irish music session, one of many held every week in pubs around Tokyo, and every one of the musicians was Japanese. Most were young and many were university students who belonged to Celtic clubs where they discovered Irish culture. Few had visited Ireland.
“I think there are people who really are interested in foreign cultures. And once they like it, they really want to master it. That’s very strong in Japan especially,” said Rieko Yamashita, chair of Comhaltas Japan.
Comhaltas opened a branch in Japan in 1991, its first in Asia, starting tin whistle classes and set dancing lessons the same year. Comhaltas Japan holds a Féile every year and there are regular classes in dancing, sean-nós singing and various musical instruments.
“Riverdance came over to Japan several times and that boosted the popularity of dancing. People were fascinated by the dancing style and wanted to learn dancing as well,” Yamashita said.
Yutaka Ohashi had been playing the fiddle and the mandolin in bluegrass bands for 30 years before he discovered Irish music, adding the button accordion to his range of instruments.
He was so taken with the music that he travelled to Ireland for the Willie Clancy Summer School in Milltown Malbay, Co Clare and at the age of 70 he plays in sessions about three times a week.
“To play bluegrass music I needed to be part of a band. But my work was very hard and I didn’t have the time to practise with a band. With the Irish session, if I have a time I can go and play,” he said.
“Whenever I go to an Irish music session, I can find a friend.”
Doire Myler chairs the Irish Network Japan which organises the annual St Patrick’s Day parade in Tokyo. The parade attracts thousands as it moves along Omotesando, a tree-lined shopping street known as Tokyo’s Champs-Élysées where no other foreign national celebration is allowed every year.
“In terms of people marching, there are 30 or more groups from different areas and they’re very diverse. Some of the universities here send their cheerleading squads or marching bands and then we have a lot of smaller Irish groups, U2 enthusiasts or Irish setters,” he said.
Like Comhaltas Japan, the St Patrick’s Day parade is almost entirely Japanese and Myler is one of only two Irish people on the 12-strong organising committee. Their interest in Ireland and its culture comes from different directions.
“I think probably a lot of it, if I was honest, is probably going back to the soccer World Cup back in 2002 and the springing up of Irish pubs all across the country. So you can go to any reasonably sized town in Japan and you’ll find an Irish pub and basically the genesis was around then,” he said.
“A lot of the real awareness of Ireland’s existence came with that but you have other things. Enya was huge here and that kind of Celtic music groups that come here fairly regularly. Gilbert O’Sullivan was very popular here. He still toured here up until recently, I believe. So you have these kind of outlier interests.”
Myler believes that the formal nature of Japanese social relations makes the informality and ease of contact in an Irish pub all the more attractive. And Ireland’s standing received a further boost when Japan hosted the Rugby World Cup in 2019.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, it was a wave of green. And there was great love for the Irish because there was a particular video when Japan had beaten South Africa previously and for the Irish fans this was David versus Goliath and their celebrations became viral here. So everyone thought the Irish love the Japanese and that goes vice versa,” he said.
“So when the Rugby World Cup came, we were like comrades. And then of course they beat us, which was also a big upset and I think they loved us all the more for that.”
