In a world full of so many musical instruments, it’s increasingly tempting to cast off the acoustic guitar as a relic of an older era. Much like the violin or the acoustic piano, it now exists in constant competition with newer tools in an ever-evolving musical landscape. In many ways, I can understand how easily it’s dismissed. Yet when I listen to albums like Shun Komatsubara’s Dear, I’m reminded why acoustic-centered works remain vital to any listener’s collection.
It was many moons ago that I first picked up a guitar. Before it became my first instrument, I spent countless nights quizzing my now late father about how his own guitar produced the sounds it did. For the longest time, I was simply fascinated by the music he could coax from his humble classical guitar. Small discoveries–how fretting shaped pitch–gave way to more complex realizations: how a capo shifted tonal centers, how tuning altered the instrument’s range and possibilities.
Whatever lessons my father imparted were most deeply solidified when I translated them into my own hands. On my best days, I couldn’t believe what was coming out of the instrument. Pressed closely to my chest, I could feel its vibrations reverberating through my heart and body, echoing whatever emotions or imagery swirled in my head. That visceral closeness imprinted in me a lasting love for hearing the instrument played with similar authority by others. It’s those memories–of how the guitar can speak to anyone–that push me to recognize how Shun must have arrived at his sterling debut.
Shun Komatsubara was born in 1958 in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, a city often overlooked by those outside Japan, and within the country itself known as a quiet, rural destination for those seeking nature and traces of samurai history and a bit of industrial flavor. Far from the bustle of Fukuoka, Kitakyushu, or Hiroshima, its more-traveled neighbor. Life, quite simply, moves at a slower pace, especially for those born and raised within it.
As related to Acoustic Guitar World, Shun came of age during Japan’s first folk boom. Under the influence of singer-songwriters like Takuro Yoshida, Yōsui Inoue, and Shigeru Izumiya, he picked up the guitar in junior high school, trying to replicate the songs he heard on the radio. Raised in the countryside, he spoke of feeling a natural affinity for fingerstyle playing, and by the time he came of age, he was performing and singing at live venues, where exposure to American blues gradually pushed him toward writing and singing original material.
What ultimately led Shun toward instrumental music was hearing Isato Nakagawa’s 1977 release, 1310. The realization that a distinctly Japanese form of blues existed made him reconsider his tenuous relationship with homegrown music. A career spent supporting others began to feel limiting. In short order, he left his small pond for Tokyo, where he met Nakagawa, along with fellow guitarist Rintaro Okazaki–both of whom encouraged him to take his playing more seriously.
Shigeru Amano of the rock band N.S.P. was the first to recognize that Shun should commit to releasing instrumental work. On the strength of a demo tape, Amano founded the Abend label in the late ’80s specifically to release Shun’s music, even if it meant remaining its sole artist.
A single listen to Shun’s 1992 debut, Dear, makes clear why his music resonated so deeply. More impressionistic than technically showy, tracks like the title piece and “文明開化” carve vivid, visual impressions through the guitar. Shun often spoke of composing melodies in response to imagery.
Unlike players who improvise their way toward ideas, Shun approached the instrument with intention–seeking first to evoke something, then refining phrases until they conveyed a sense of warmth and invitation. In the original liner notes, he described the album’s central theme:
When I was 10 years old, the film 2001: A Space Odyssey was released. How many dreams people must have projected onto the boundless universe back then.
And now, with 2001 just around the corner, it seems that people’s dreams and hopes for the future know no bounds.
And yet, for some reason, I find myself drawn to the past–drawn even to a past long, long ago.
I am captivated by the romance held in the hearts of those who lived in the days of “the land where the sun rises.” I have tried to give form to some of that romance–as a guitarist, with a single guitar.
For me, it is a feeling of quiet, gentle warmth–honobono. Please take your time and listen to my honobono world: Dear.
Songs like “Green Grass Wave” draw from faint memories–watching Little House on the Prairie on NHK–and translate that distant pastoral imagery into something rooted in his own countryside upbringing. The gentle “Bird of Paradise” blends subtle tropical motifs into feather-light Balearic ambient folk. “Hijiri,” a jazz waltz, hints at Shun’s early encounters with modal playing. Meanwhile, the spirited and lilting “桃割れにドレス” feels like a springtime jaunt where Americana and Japanese folk intersect, matching sonically its visual concept of Western dress paired with traditional Japanese styling.
Dear is shaped by these visual impulses, each track an extension of Shun’s six strings. While pieces like “Sleeping Beauty” echo something of the Italian folk tradition, others–like “Rocking Chair に眠るとき”–occupy a rarified space reminiscent of players like William Ackerman or Michael Hedges, who sought to move the guitar beyond fixed geography. Even when Shun introduces effects, as on “Voyager,” where his echoplex-treated guitar expands outward, the sense of honobono remains intact. “Will” closes the record on a reflective note, embodying quiet determination. Plaintive yet inquisitive, the music communicates without the need for words or genre.
For some of us, we’ve all felt that moment–when what flows from your fingers, vibrating through a set of strings and coursing between two bodies, feels like some unspoken conversation. In the end, there are certain lessons one can’t share but can only leave for others to discover. Recorded in May 1992 in Tokyo, Shun Komatsubara’s Dear still resonates with paeans inspired by its most fleeting, beautiful season.
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