Katherine Whatley - Writer in Tokyo

Katherine Whatley

I'm a writer in Tokyo, Japan

Available for contracts

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I speak English and Japanese

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About me

I am a Japan based musician, artist and researcher.

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I am a koto musician (13 string Japanese traditional transverse harp) and my musical interests include free jazz and improvised music, improvised music in the context of non-Western and folk musics, and Japanese jazz. I also have classical koto training.

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I write mainly about Japanese music, art and culture. My work has been featured in the BBC, Japan Times, Artsy, Hyperallergic, WeTransfer, Point of Departure, among others. I've also done research work for NPR, CNN, New York Times as well as many academics and artists working on Japan.

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In addition, I am a PhD candidate at Stanford University in the East Asian Languages and Cultures Department. My research interests include musical motifs in Heian literature, East Asian music, the intersection of gender and music, and transcultural exchange.

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I am always looking for new opportunities. Please contact me with any and all music, writing, translation, editing and interpretation projects, as well as musical opportunities.

ライター、箏奏者。
サンフランシスコ生まれ、東京育ち。コロンビア大学で東アジア言語文化と民族音楽学を専攻。在学中に日本のジャズと20世紀の音楽に関心を持つ。大学後、東京に戻り、箏の稽古に通うかたわら、新聞・雑誌へ日本の音楽・文化について執筆した。現在はスタンフォードで平安文学と日本の音楽を研究中。

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My Creations

  1. Between Koenji and Brooklyn

    22 September
    Between Koenji and Brooklyn

    Between Koenji and Brooklyn: Tokyo, New York, and the Circulations of Experimental Musics in a Global World

    This peer reviewed article was published in June, 2024 in positions: asia critique, published by Duke University Press. Go here for the final article including images and videos: https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-11024306
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  2. Coyote Song

    24 September
    Coyote Song

    Composition by Katherine Whatley. Performance by Stanford New Ensemble and Earplay Ensemble at CCRMA. February 2022.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_FzKtSXopgAqpTXjtmE5wqFjghlYG4d/view?usp=share_link

  3. Vaim + Kat

    22 September

    Collaboration with Vaim Saarv. Featuring electronics, koto and voice. Performance at Stanford University's CCRMA.

  4. Kiyoshi Koyama: A life lived with jazz

    4 October 2018
    Kiyoshi Koyama: A life lived with jazz

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/03/29/music/kiyoshi-koyama-life-lived-jazz/#.WvJPoC-PDqQ

    “I have lived a life alongside jazz,” says Kiyoshi Koyama, jazz critic, journalist and radio host. This is apparent on a recent visit to his home in Chiba Prefecture, where he and his wife live surrounded by walls of neatly organized records, CDs, books and... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  5. A cloven landscape, a cloven tree, a cloven self

    4 October 2018
    A cloven landscape, a cloven tree, a cloven self

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/01/04/arts/cloven-landscape-cloven-tree-cloven-self/#.WvJPkC-PDqQ

    On a recent trip to Tohoku, photographer Naoya Hatakeyama took a picture of a tree. It wasn’t a particularly remarkable tree, but it caught his attention all the same.

    In Hatakeyama’s photo the tree stands in the middle distance, right in the center of the... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  6. Living and breathing history, through noh

    4 October 2018
    Living and breathing history, through noh

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/03/01/stage/living-breathing-history-noh/#.WvJPmi-PDqQ

    Noh performer Hisa Uzawa has spent her life devoted to an art form that — with its slow and steady movements, sparse staging and ancient chanting — may at first seem staid. In her hands, however, the 650-year-old tradition becomes relentlessly contemporary.

    ​Uzawa was born... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  7. Artist Asako Iwama explores the relationship between food and language

    4 October 2018
    Artist Asako Iwama explores the relationship between food and language

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/02/01/arts/artist-asako-iwama-explores-relationship-food-language/#.WvJPli-PDqQ

    Food and the desire to eat has always been mysterious to Asako Iwama. When the artist and cook was a young child, she could not understand why she had to eat. Her earliest memories of food are of her grandmother’s cooking in a strange yet... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  8. Tracing a Giant Step: John Coltrane in Japan

    4 October 2018
    Tracing a Giant Step: John Coltrane in Japan

    http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD57/PoD57Coltrane.html

    This article, published in Point of Departure, commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of John Coltrane's historic tour to Japan. Through archival research in Japan and the United States, parsing through published and unpublished materials and through oral histories, I create a rich picture of the tour.

  9. Japan Jazz BBC Documentary

    2 June 2019
    Japan Jazz BBC Documentary

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003569

    Musician and journalist Katherine Whatley explores the rich and surprising history of jazz in Japan. Surprising because the chaotic individualism of this American art form appears at first to go against the very grain of Japan’s communitarian sprit. More surprising still that, having been banned as ‘enemy music’ during... continue reading (1, 1 image)