Blue Flame
Striking a note of sophistication

A place where just you, jazz and the night can get together...” This is how owner Daisuke Nukaga describes Blue flame, his first venture into running a bar. It has been conceived as a place where good music, fine art and excellent wines mingle in a convivial atmosphere.
The architect, Shigeo Ogura, a jazz guitarist himself, envisioned Blue Flame first and foremost as a space for playing and listening to music and he paid a lot of attention to finding perfect acoustics as part of his detailed design concept. His inspirational launchpad was the number 5, representing the five-line stave. Entering through the elegant narrow metallic door, you are greeted by a five-LED light arrangement and the wall opposite the bar has five lines of mirrors. Straight ahead your eyes meet a panel composed of multiple rows of small blue lights.
“And look at the ceiling,” says the architect. “It’s covered with gently undulating strips of wood like railway sleepers. They represent waves of music.”
Musically blue
“The equation here,” continues the architect, “is this: Blue light = blue note = jazz. A piano can’t produce the hazy sound of flattening the third, fifth and seventh notes like a guitar or a saxophone can do. This is African sound...and it’s called ‘blue light’.”
The name Blue Flame was chosen by Daisuke. He lived in London for a couple of years; while attending university, he endeavoured to understand what English gentlemen’s clubs where all about, in the hope of creating something similar in Japan. But his family’s musical connections prevailed; he’s the grandson of Nobuo Hara, one of Japan’s most famous jazz musicians, and he even has one of his grandfather’s saxophones on display. Nevertheless, perhaps a touch of Daisuke’s visits to London’s best clubs can be detected in Blue Flame’s sedate and casual elegance.
Nobuo Hara is now 80 years old but still plays vigorously and leads his big band in concerts in and around Tokyo. The band always starts or ends a performance with the standard number Blue Flame so it was a natural choice for the name of the bar. Nobuo occasionally comes to visit his grandson. He sits at the bar listening to the blues guitar of his talented son Tomoya Hara, who plays there regularly.
Helping customers to feel at home
Daisuke’s mother, Mariko Nukaga, was also very much involved in the creation of Blue Flame. She personally devised the menu, which includes typical Japanese home-style cuisine of the highest quality.
“Visually, this is a rather sophisticated place, a showcase for art and music,” she comments, “but I want to make customers feel at home.”
A master of glass
Blue Flame’s concern for detail even extends to the choice of glasses. They are all exquisite examples of Edo kiriko, a style of hand-made cut glassware that developed in Edo (Tokyo) in the 1830s. Industrial diamond cutters are used to etch intricate patterns on thick annealed glass with a high lead content. Typical traditional designs resemble woven bamboo baskets, fish scales, and chrysanthemums. Edo kiriko has been much admired both at home and abroad ever since Commodore Perry praised it in the 1850s. The Blue Flame glasses were made by Akio Kurokawa, who began his apprenticeship at the age 16 under a master craftsman. He explained his technique:
" I introduced curved lines, which is something nobody had ever done before, and I started avoiding regularity. If you look carefully at my glasses, you’ll notice that the designs on each side are different. I’ve been producing glass pieces for half a century already. I’ve created thousands of pieces, never repeating patterns. Each piece is done by hand, so I can’t produce more than three in one day.”
Although he sometimes has to produce sets with identical patterns to meet orders, what gives him most pleasure is producing pieces that are one-of-a-kind.
“I love working like this day after day, especially when I stumble upon a new pattern. And then I get real pleasure from knowing that people enjoy drinking from my glasses.”
A visit to Blue Flame is actually something more than a place where you, jazz and the night can get together; it’s a journey into a world of carefully considered and sophisticated detail—from glasses to lighting, from repast to wines, and from music to conviviality.
BLUE FLAME
4-14-2 Minami Azabu
Tel:3-3446-7730