Moonshiner
Publishers / Periodicals
Moonshiner (styled MoonShiner) is a monthly bluegrass magazine published in Japanese, and the only one of its kind. Saburo "Sab" Watanabe Inoue founded it in 1983 through B.O.M. Service ("Bluegrass and Old-time Music"), the Hyōgo-based mail-order company he ran with his brother Toshio, and he edited it himself from 1991. Watanabe was the banjo player in Bluegrass 45, the first Japanese bluegrass band to tour the United States, in 1971. He also produced Tony Rice's first album and co-founded Japan's long-running Takarazuka Bluegrass Festival in 1972. For more than 35 years Moonshiner gave Japanese readers bluegrass news, album reviews, artist profiles, and listings of live music, and it ran Japanese translations of Murphy Henry's Women in Bluegrass newsletter. IBMA named Watanabe Print Media Person of the Year in 1998 and gave the magazine a Distinguished Achievement Award in September 2019, two months before his death.
In the newsletter
- No. 27 September 2001