SNA (Taipei) — In a restaurant at the foot of the mountains in Taipei, local singer Sun Hui-chu picks up a microphone, waits for the drumming to start, and then belts out a Japanese pop song from the 1980s.

She has sung for decades in the picturesque hot spring district of Beitou, where Japanese officials would soak in the thermal waters during their colonial rule of Taiwan.

Today, Sun and other performers keep alive nagashi, a musical culture from Japan that has all but disappeared at home.

Nagashi dates back to a time before karaoke machines had been invented, when troupes of musicians would make sidewalks, bars, or tea parlors their stage and perform the popular songs of the day. The musicians were called nagashi, which translates as “flow,” a name that had nothing to do with musical rhythm and everything to do with how the performers flowed from one place to another.

Nagashi culture arrived in Taiwan in the 1930s when the island was ruled by Japan, and flourished in the decades after Japan’s occupation ended in 1945. While geisha in Japan would also play music for customers, nagashi played to order. In bars, restaurants, or private homes, Japanese businessmen and wealthy Taiwanese could request a song as if they had their own personal live jukebox. Sometimes, customers would sing along.

Sun began her career in 1964 as a teenage nagashi singer in the bars of Beitou, in northern Taipei.

It was almost twenty years since Taiwan had been handed back to China, but Japanese influence was still strong. Many older Taiwanese spoke Japanese, the language they had been taught in at school. They listened to Japanese songs and continued to do business with the Asian economic power.

Accompanied by a guitar and an accordion, Sun sang mostly Japanese love songs because the majority of the bar customers were businessmen from Japan.

“Actually, at that time, we had no idea what most of the songs meant,” said Sun. “We learnt how to pronounce each of the sounds, but we didn’t know the meanings at all. We could only sing them and that was it.”

In its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, a single restaurant could have twenty or thirty nagashi bands on their books, said Sun.

While much less so than before, nagashi bands are still in demand in Beitou, even as this culture has all but disappeared in Japan itself. Before the coronavirus hit, Sun was still working full time singing Japanese and Taiwanese songs in restaurants, and at birthdays and weddings.

Nagashi performers too have suffered this year, with Taiwanese shying away from restaurants, and with the government warning people to observe social distancing. Sun’s band member, Hong Chih-xiong, said bookings were a tenth of last year’s, as the service industry in general lost business.

Hong, 54, said that nagashi developed in Beitou “because in the early days Japanese would have lots of money, but nowhere to spend it.”

“They were bored in the evenings, so they would come to Beitou,” said Hong, whose stage name is Jesus. “They would see people playing the guitar, and so they would request a song, and we would sing for them. There wasn’t so much equipment then; it was very simple, we would just play the accordion and guitar.”

Some famous Taiwanese singers started their careers in Beitou’s nagashi bars, including Jody Chiang and her sister Chiang Shu-na.

Wealthier residents in Beitou would also pay nagashi bands to perform in their homes at family parties.

P. K. Chen, a photojournalist with an interest in history, was twelve when a nagashi band came to play in his aunt’s home. The five-member band sung Japanese and Taiwanese songs and played the drums, guitar, caraccas, tambourine, and keyboard. There was a round table for dinner, and relatives and his aunt’s friends squeezed into a small space for dancing.

Chen, 57, was struck by one of the singers. “She could remember a lot of songs. It really amazed me; whatever you ordered.”

Away from the family home, nagashi also had a seedier image. Prostitution was licensed in Beitou from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s. Businessmen would travel to Beitou and pay for escorts to drink with them and listen to the bands.

Nagashi started to decline when authorities ended regulated prostitution in Beitou in 1979, leading to the closure of about forty hotels over the next decade.

At the same time, the industry was hit by the opening of karaoke bars with cassette tapes and laser discs.

Karaoke has also shaped nagashi. Having grown up with KTV, customers today prefer to sing themselves. Nagashi performers have become karaoke machines, but with one key advantage: “We can change the key to accompany customers’ voices to make them sound better than they actually are,” said Hong. “Even if someone sings badly, we make them sound good.”

Hong regularly performs in the private rooms of restaurants and hotels as a one-man-karaoke machine. On one evening in Beitou earlier this year, Hong set up his keyboard, a computer with song lyrics, mixer console and microphones in a hot spring hotel. Around fifty co-workers and family members trickled into the room for a private company event. As they tucked into dinner around banquet tables, they took turns to step onto the stage and sing mostly Mandarin songs. Hong accompanied them on the keyboard and backing vocals, but never once took center-stage himself–something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

“Before, we had to sing for so many hours a day,” said Sun. “Now with new technology, everyone can sing, so people nowadays mainly book us to play instruments. We sing maybe only a few songs, and it’s the customers who perform.”

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