Before he was a novelist, Haruki Murakami ran a jazz bar. He opened Peter Cat in Tokyo in 1974, named it after his pet, and kept it going until 1981. On Saturday 21 November 2026, Barbican Hall rebuilds something of that room for one day only with Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat: a Japanese Jazz Night, a concert built around the music that runs through his fiction.
Both performances have sold out. The Barbican box office shows no tickets for either the 5pm matinee or the 8.30pm evening show, so returns are the only remaining route in. The concert is part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, which runs from 13 to 22 November 2026, and it closes the Barbican’s own Haruki Murakami season.
One night inside a rebuilt Tokyo listening bar, with three generations of Japanese jazz on the same bill.
Peter Cat, the Tokyo bar Murakami ran from 1974 to 1981
Murakami has described his writing style as “kind of a free improvisation”, and music does real work in his novels. It sets the mood of a scene, it tells you something about a character that the dialogue does not, and it sometimes opens the door the plot walks through. Jazz sits at the centre of that, and Peter Cat is where the habit was formed.
The kind of room the Barbican is recreating has its own name in Japan. A jazz kissa is a small café built around a record collection and a serious sound system, where the music is the reason you are there and conversation stays low. Tokyo had roughly 200 of them at the peak in the late 1970s, and about half have closed since.
Photographer Philip Arneill and broadcaster James Catchpole have been documenting those rooms since 2015 and have covered more than 160 jazz kissa and bars across Japan. Their Tokyo Jazz Joints project supplied the photograph the Barbican is using to promote this show.
Junko Onishi, Sachi Hayasaka and Yoshio Suzuki’s The Blend
Junko Onishi brings her trio. Born in Kyoto in 1967, she graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1989 and moved to New York, where she signed to Blue Note. In 1994 she recorded a live double album at the Village Vanguard with bassist Reginald Veal and drummer Herlin Riley, which is still the record most people reach for first.
Sachi Hayasaka plays alto and soprano saxophone and appears here with her trio TReS. Her debut album Free Fight is being reissued by the London label BBE Records.
Yoshio Suzuki was born in Kiso-Fukushima, in Nagano Prefecture, in 1946. He lived in New York from 1973 to 1976 and played there with Stan Getz, with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and with the Gil Evans Orchestra. He brings The Blend, with Kosuke Mine on tenor saxophone, Keisuke Nakamura on trumpet, Hakuei Kim on piano and Tamaya Honda on drums.
All three acts are working on the same question, which is what happens to American jazz standards when Japanese musicians play them. Alongside those reinterpretations there are original compositions. The production adds spoken word, a stage design built for the show and newly commissioned visuals, so it sits closer to a staged piece than a straight triple bill.
Murakami himself will not be on stage. The Barbican’s wording is that he “has graciously given his blessing for it to take place”.
The last of four Barbican Murakami events, all of them sold out
This concert closes a Barbican season devoted to Murakami that opened on 8 October 2026. There are four events in it, and by mid September 2026 every one had sold out.
- End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Barbican Theatre, 8 to 11 October. A stage adaptation of the novel, adapted by Ako Takahashi, directed and choreographed by Philippe Decouflé and starring Tatsuya Fujiwara. Performed in Japanese with English surtitles, 2 hours 45 minutes including a 20 minute interval, age guidance 12 and over.
- Battle Royale, 10 October at 4pm, screened with an introduction by Tatsuya Fujiwara, who played the lead.
- Haruki Murakami in Conversation plus a screening of Tony Takitani, 11 October at 5.45pm in Cinema 1. Murakami reads from The City and Its Uncertain Walls and talks to Simon McBurney.
- Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat, Barbican Hall, 21 November.
Event details
- Event: Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat: a Japanese Jazz Night
- Date: Saturday 21 November 2026
- Venue: Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
- Matinee: 5pm, doors 4.30pm
- Evening performance: 8.30pm, doors 8pm
- Tickets: from £34 including the £4 transaction fee. Barbican Members get 20 per cent off with no transaction fee, and Young Barbican tickets are £18 for 16 to 25 year olds
- Availability: both performances sold out
- Presented by: the Barbican in association with Serious, and produced by Serious
- Part of: EFG London Jazz Festival 2026 and the Barbican’s Haruki Murakami season
Barbican Hall
Getting to Barbican Hall
Barbican Hall sits inside the main Barbican Centre on Silk Street. Head to Level G and follow the signs to your seating level. The centre is reachable by tube, bus, train, bicycle and on foot, and car parking can be booked in advance. The Barbican also advises that its contemporary concerts may contain flashing lights and haze, and asks anyone who needs more detail to contact the box office.
Jazz arrived in Japan in the 1920s and has been pulled apart and rebuilt there ever since, which is the thread this concert is following. For returns and any late release, keep an eye on the Barbican event page.
