Kiyoshi Koyama, the editor who improved Japan’s Swing Journal and produced important historic
reissues of jazz recordings in handsome, informative boxed sets (so became nicknamed “Boxman”), has died of stomach cancer. He was 82 years old, and expired in Kashiwa, Japan, according to the New York Times obituary written by Giovanni Russonello.
Koyama was a longtime member of the JJA and personal friend to many of members. Of his boxed sets, JJA Lifetime Achievement in Jazz honoree Dan Morgenstern wrote, “the Keynote box [is] perhaps the crown jewel” (Morgenstern earned a 1990 Grammy Award for his liner notes to the Kiyoshi-produced set Brownie: The Complete Emarcy Recordings of Clifford Brown). Mitchell Seidel noted that Koyama “always gave material good play and was open to suggestions.”
Besides editing Swing Journal from 1969 to 1980 and 1990-93, Koyama had been the Japanese correspondent for DownBeat. He was heard on radio for 50 years, hosting an NHK interview-and-music program, “Jazz Tonight.” Katherine Whatley’s 2015 profile of him in The Japanese Times reported he had recently donated his archives, including some 30,000 recordings and cassettes containing his interviews, to New York University.
