Klipsch La Scala AL5

There’s a good case to be made that the world’s greatest— and strangest—audiophile culture resides in Japan. Probably the most important notion the Japanese have introduced to our hobby is that home audio isn’t merely a way of heightening the musical art of others but can be an art in itself.

This idea’s most flamboyant embodiment was the poet, journalist, chef, and amplifier builder Susumu Sakuma, better known as Sakuma-san.

After having built many amplifiers as a young man, Sakumasan experienced an epiphany: Amplifiers that measured well often failed to make him feel deeply. He soon discovered that, for him, the most emotional sound came from mono systems powered by transformer-coupled amplifiers that used directly heated triode tubes.

In 1968, somewhat improbably, Sakuma-san opened a restaurant in the quaint seaside town of Tateyama. The eatery, called Concorde, was crowded with amplifiers of his design, which he demonstrated with a Garrard 401 turntable, a damped Grace tonearm, a Denon DL-102 mono cartridge, and Altec and Lowther speakers. Apparently, Concorde also served food: For years, the sole dish prepared by Sakuma-san was “hamburger steak,” which came with two sauces and cost around $10.

In the articles on hi-fi that he contributed to the Japanese magazine MJ, Sakuma-san also wrote about film, fishing, karaoke, and pachinko machines, and he usually began and ended his contributions with a poem. He considered himself an evangelist for emotional sound and demonstrated his audio systems in homes, at conferences, and on concert stages around the world. Though he passed in 2018, his fan club, called Direct Heating, remains a happening concern.1 Sakuma-san was fond of coining mottos—one was “farewell to theory”—but what has stuck with me most is his description of an ideal sound: “endless energy with sorrow.”