Located near the Imperial Palace in Central Tokyo, Nippon Budokan, which simply means, “Japan Martial Arts Hall,” first opened ahead of the 1964 Summer Olympics, where it introduced judo as an Olympic sport. At the 2020 (technically, 2021) Summer Olympics, Budokan again served as a venue for both judo and karate, but for music fans, it’s more famous as a concert venue. This is where The Beatles played their first show in Japan. Artists like Cheap Trick, Bob Dylan, and Eric Clapton have all recorded famous live albums at Budokan, and a few weeks ago, we got to see one of them play there live.
The Beatles and Cheap Trick
In the summer of 1966, Beatlemania came to Tokyo as the Beatles played a five-night stint at Budokan. According to Japan Today, their manager, Brian Epstein, had negotiated that the Fab Four would only play a venue that could seat at least 10,000 people. Tokyo Dome hadn’t been built yet, so Budokan (which currently has a capacity of over 14,000) was the only venue in the city big enough to accommodate that many fans.
Even today, it’s not unusual for stadium rock bands like Muse or U2 to perform outside Tokyo proper, at larger venues like the Yokohama Arena or Saitama Super Arena. On The Beatles Anthology 2, you can hear two songs, “Rock and Roll Music,” and “She’s a Woman,” recorded live at Budokan.
Fun fact: Cheap Trick’s live album (and overall bestselling album), At Budokan, wasn’t actually recorded at Budokan. The album, which contains the band’s signature song, “I Want You to Want Me,” and other hits like “Surrender,” catapulted Cheap Trick from “big in Japan” to the status of multi-platinum artists in the U.S.
The Library of Congress inducted At Budokan into the National Recording Registry in 2019, and the album also made Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. However, according to producer Jack Douglas (via Produce Like a Pro), the audio for At Budokan was lifted from an Osaka show.
The Cream of Controversy
Earlier this month, it made headlines when MTV News shut down, and as someone who grew up during its heyday, I’m a little out of touch with music these days. The last time I really caught up on trends was back in late 2019 or early 2020 when I was going through lists of the best albums of the 2010s. Rolling Stone had Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy at #1, but now he’s a self-proclaimed Nazi and I can’t in good conscience listen to his music anymore.
Last month, however, I was listening to the new U2 album, Songs of Surrender, and it put me in the music mood. I started talking to Azusa about music more and seeing U2 live in 2019 in what would be my last concert before the pandemic. She then twisted my arm at the last minute to go see Eric Clapton, since he was in town at Budokan and he was the first artist from outside Japan whose music she had ever heard when she was younger. She literally bought our tickets for us the night before, and at the time, I was busy writing and wasn’t aware of the full extent to which Clapton himself has courted controversy in recent years, for both his anti-vaccine views and the resurfacing of a racist rant that he made onstage in England in 1976.
Clapton, at least, has apologized for the incident, attributing it to drug and alcohol addiction, but I still felt guilty, in hindsight, about supporting him as a concertgoer after making up my mind to essentially boycott West. There’s an obvious double standard there, since Clapton is an artist who, in his words, has “championed Black music,” or appropriated it, depending on how you look at it.
All of this thinking came after I saw him in concert and read up on why he’s now persona non grata online, the way The Beatles originally were among nationalist protesters who thought they would desecrate the sacred martial arts hall, Budokan (per the BBC).
Eric Clapton Live at Budokan 2023 (Tokyo Residency)
As for the show, we were seated all the way up at the top in the west corner and didn’t have the best view of the stage, but Budokan does have good acoustics. I was surprised by how narrow the corridors outside the main hall are; you can really tell it wasn’t built with concert crowds in mind. We were able to take the train straight from Chofu to Kudanshita Station (usually, we have to change trains in Shinjuku), and were there for the second night of Clapton’s six-show residency from April 15–24, 2023.
When he performed “Wonderful Tonight,” people’s phones came out, and I shot a 30-second clip, where you can hear what it sounds like inside Budokan, below. I was most interested to hear “Crossroads” and “Layla” — complete with the piano exit — live, just because of the Robert Johnson of it all and because I was first exposed to Clapton’s music through the Goodfellas soundtrack and my mom’s The Cream of Clapton CD.
Here's the full set list for the show, according to EricClapton.com:
01. Blue Rainbow
02. Pretending
03. Key To The Highway
04. Hoochie Coochie Man
05. I Shot the Sheriff
06. Kind Hearted Woman
07. Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out
08. Call Me The Breeze
09. Sam Hall
10. Tears In Heaven
11. Kerry
12. Badge
13. Wonderful Tonight
14. Crossroads
15. Little Queen Of Spades
16. Layla
17. High Time We Went