I recognized a track from Wayne Shorter’s record “Native Dancer,” with Milton Nascimento, and a pianist who sounded like Mary Lou Williams, although I couldn’t be sure. Where there was singing, it was generally not in English. There was slow or spacious solo-piano music from various indistinct traditions a few melodies that might have been film-soundtrack themes a bit of improvisation. Sakamoto would logically be interested in. Some of what we heard at Kokage sounded like what Mr. (We were downstairs in Kokage, but the same music was playing upstairs in Kajitsu.) I asked a waiter if the playlist was Mr. It came from an unpretentious source - a single, wide speaker sitting on a riser about a foot off the floor, hidden behind a serving table. (A Japanese tea shop, Ippodo, occupies a counter toward the front of the street-level space.)Īs soon as we sat down, the music pinned our attention. It is a split-level operation: On the second floor is Kajitsu, which follows the Zen, vegan principles of Shojin cuisine, and on the ground floor is Kokage, a more casual operation that incorporates meat and fish into the same idea. Sakamoto’s favorite restaurant, on 39th Street near Lexington Avenue, with my younger son.

Such a person can at least accomplish the minimum, which is to signal to the customer that attention is being paid, in a generous, original, specific and small-ego way. I want it chosen by a person who knows music up and down and sideways: its context, its dynamism and its historical and aural clichés. I would prefer that music not seem an afterthought, or the result of algorithmic computation. The same should apply to the music, which after all will be playing before, during and after the eating. If I’m going to spend decent money on a meal, I don’t want the reservation-taker, the dishwasher or someone from the back office to be cooking it I want someone who is very good at cooking food to do it. I consider thoughtless music in restaurants a problem that has gotten worse over the years, even since the advent of the music-streaming services, which - you’d think - should have made it better. It took me a few weeks to appreciate how radical the story was, if indeed it was true. Sakamoto has no particular desire to publicize it. Sakamoto started making playlists for the restaurant, none of which include any of his own music. Sakamoto suggested that he could take over the job of choosing it, without pay, if only so he could feel more comfortable eating there. The issue was not so much that the music was loud, but that it was thoughtless. Sakamoto, it seems, so likes a particular Japanese restaurant in Murray Hill, and visits it so often, that he finally had to be straight with the chef: He could not bear the music it played for its patrons. Last fall a friend told me a story about Ryuichi Sakamoto, the renowned musician and composer who lives in the West Village.

Ryuichi sakamoto songs