For listeners drawn to the sounds of King Gnu, Fujii Kaze, or 9m88, there is a band worth paying close attention to: WONK, a Tokyo-based collective whose presence has steadily expanded beyond Japan. Since their appearance at Megaport Festival in Kaohsiung last March, their name has been firmly etched into the consciousness of Taiwanese audiences.
Their headline show at Legacy Taipei that August played to a packed house. While WONK are widely recognized in Japan, a closer look at the members’ backgrounds reveals that their reputation is not the product of calculated packaging. Rather, it is the result of a slow, ground-up process—built through time, shared spaces, and accumulated musical trust.
The jazz research societies at Keio University and Waseda University function much like university music circles in Taiwan: places where people meet, play together, and gradually shape a shared musical language. It was within this environment that drummer Hikaru Arata, step by step, connected with Ayatake Ezaki, Kento Nagatsuka, and Kan Inoue. Each member is a highly capable instrumentalist in their own right. Notably, Ezaki is also a core member of millennium parade, an experimental and labyrinthine project formed with Daiki Tsuneta of King Gnu.
Millennium parade continues to release striking and unconventional work, consistently capturing attention across scenes and borders. Among them, the track “U” has surpassed 60 million streams—an emblem of how far this interconnected musical lineage has traveled, without losing its sense of risk or imagination.
What sets WONK apart is their genuine curiosity toward music beyond Japan. This outward-looking sensibility has long been a defining trait of Japanese musicians, yet WONK reinterpret it in a way that feels distinctly generational.
A telling example is their decision to invite Oscar Jerome—one of the most compelling voices in today’s London music scene—to remix “Sweeter, More Bitter.” Jerome is not only a key figure in contemporary UK jazz and soul, but also someone personally connected to the author, having been a senior during Yen’s years studying in the UK.
This collaboration prompts a quiet realization: truly good music, and truly good people, find their way across borders through unexpected channels. They travel, transform, and reappear—never fixed to a single place or scene.
Japan’s jazz festivals and jazz ecosystem are currently undergoing a remarkable evolution, opening themselves to broader influences and new creative frameworks. Out of this fertile transition have emerged artists like Fujii Kaze and WONK—creators who move fluidly across genres while retaining a clear artistic core. Their rise feels less like a trend, and more like a natural consequence of a scene learning how to breathe outward.
Turning back to Taiwan, WONK’s attentive ears naturally led them toward collaborations with Elephant Gym and 9m88. This is a gesture I deeply value within the Taiwanese music landscape—a sign of listening before speaking, of understanding before merging.
With every collaboration, WONK seem to locate something worth learning from their counterparts. Through this process of exchange, they gradually evolve, allowing the resulting chemistry to surface organically in the music itself. What emerges is not a forced fusion, but a living dialogue—one that continues to reshape their sound with each encounter.
As an aside, one particularly intriguing detail is that frontman Kento Nagatsuka once worked as a French cuisine chef. He continues to share his approach to cooking on his YouTube channel, offering a glimpse into a different yet closely related creative discipline.
In interviews, Nagatsuka has spoken about the clear parallels between cooking and songwriting: selecting ingredients, constructing a structure, and ultimately presenting a finished form. The logic behind both processes, he notes, is strikingly similar.
The meticulous balance and textural clarity found in WONK’s music may well be informed by this cross-disciplinary sensibility—where composition, in any medium, begins with intention and ends in experience.
On March 21, WONK will return to Taiwan once again. This time, however, the experience extends beyond the performance itself—the venue carries a sense of Japanese formality and understated elegance.
As fine food and wine are served, audiences are invited to embody what Kento Nagatsuka has often described as the relationship between cooking and music. It promises to be a night where sound, taste, and atmosphere converge—an evening charged with quiet intensity and carefully cultivated energy.
