Even within the terrain of Tokyo’s impressively genre-focused record shops, few establishments enjoy the cachet of Universounds. Opened in late 2001 and located in the Kōenjiminami section of the city, this intimate above-street-level space houses as robust a selection of vintage American independent and Japanese jazz, soul and funk rarities as you’ll find anywhere on the planet. The store’s prized stock is fitting given the pedigrees of co-owners Yusuke Ogawa and Ryuhei the Man. Yusuke is an impassioned jazz authority with his own reissue label, Deep Jazz Reality, and he’s the author of the primer *Independent Black Jazz of America*; Ryuhei has long been one of the city’s most active and revered rare-groove DJs. All of which makes Universounds not only a shopping destination for globe-trekking patrons like DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist or the Numero Group crew, but a valuable resource for anyone wishing to tap into the vast collective knowledge of staff and customers alike.
