Tango and Tokyo
Chapter 1 of 3 · 1900–1945
From Yokohama to Tokyo
Dance halls, records labelled French, and the ban of 1940.
Yokohama · Tsurumi · Ginza
Tango was first brought to Yokohama by North American dancers in 1914.1 The first commercial dance hall opened in 1918 at Kagetsuen, in what is now Tsurumi Ward of Yokohama.2
Megata went to Paris in 1920 and stayed until 1926, learning tango while patronizing the cabaret El Garrón; he later opened a tango academy in Tokyo and taught the Japanese aristocracy free of charge.3 At first, the Japanese believed that tango came from France, because of the French labels on the records.3 In the 1920s and 30s the "first Japanese tango boom" was carried by the wealthy few who could get a gramophone and discs.4
In the late 1930s and early 1940s Noriko Awaya and other singers popularized the Japanese style of tango.3 On 31 October 1940, under a wartime ban on dancing, Tokyo's dance halls closed for good, each one packed that last night.2 The boom ended with the war.4
The music of these years, most danced first
What happened, and where
No placed, sourced line for these years yet.