The room where butterflies live. A place between worlds. Enter at your own risk - you may not find your way back out. Sai Yoshiko's fourth and final album of the 1970s stands as one of the most singular documents in Japanese music - a jazz-inflected fever dream that marked the end of an era. Originally released in 1978 on Columbia (LX-7058-A), Chou no Sumu Heya represented a dramatic departure from her earlier psychedelic folk explorations. Here was something else entirely: a surreal and dynamic world where the inner spiritual realm finally found an exit to the outside.
Backing her throughout is the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio - the same unit that had been recording audiophile-grade masterpieces for the legendary Three Blind Mice label since 1974. Yamamoto's piano work - precise yet deeply feeling, in the lineage of Red Garland and Erroll Garner filtered through a distinctly Japanese sensibility - provides the perfect foil for Sai's otherworldly vocals. The result is an album that defies easy categorization: not quite jazz, not quite folk, not quite avant-garde, but something that encompasses all three while belonging to none.
The songs themselves read like dispatches from a parallel universe. "Tobetobe Hikosen" (Fly, Fly Airship). "Mimi no Nai Koneko" (The Kitten Without Ears). "Sabishii Indojin" (The Lonely Indian). "Ano Aoi Sora ni wa Kamisama ga Sunde Iru" (God Lives in That Blue Sky). And the title track itself - "Chou no Sumu Heya" - the room where butterflies dwell, a space of transformation and metamorphosis, beauty and fragility. After completing this album, Sai made a devastating declaration: "I can no longer write songs that satisfy me." She embarked on a journey around the world, and her voice fell silent for three decades. It would take until 2008's Takla Makan - named for the Central Asian desert meaning "go in and you will not come out" - before she would record again.
The 2021 vinyl reissue sold out immediately. Now, in response to overwhelming demand, P-Vine presents this limited edition pressing on deep purple vinyl - a color drawn directly from the album's lyrics, making the physical object itself an extension of the music's imagery.
"Whenever I read the comments on my albums in English, Spanish, Chinese, as well as Japanese through Internet, I feel they are all standing by me. Thank you everybody, and I am very happy to know that my works have transcended time and place, and reached many people." - Yoshiko Sai
Time and place transcended indeed. Almost fifty years on, these eleven songs continue to find new listeners, new rooms to inhabit, new butterflies to release.
