Mitsuyoshi Azuma is a bigwig at NTV (Nippon Telebi), one of Japan’s top broadcasters. He and his band, the Swinging Boppers, are entertainers in the classic sense, and possibly the country’s best purveyors of old-school rock n’ roll and R&B.

Their site

I mean, the guy is just a geezer salaryman having a blast, right? But he connects with young Tokyo hipsters in a way rarely seen. Too bad he performs only a few times a year. Their last performance sold out a month beforehand, but I was able to see Azuma-san perform with a trio at Club Quattro’s Orbit Blender event a few weeks ago. The only vid I caught was of Azuma breaking and fixing a string, but even this relays why people flock to his shows. Here he is playing jazz standards, his string breaking just as the vid ends:

Handclaps and the upright bassist take over during repair:

The crowd, unprompted, stays with him, keeping the beat:

String fixed (sort of), and Azuma plays it for laughs: