Toshiro Mayuzumi, known for his compositional style based on traditional Japanese sound culture, such as the sounds of shomyo (Buddhist chanting) and bonsho (temple bells), was in his youth an eclectic composer who freely employed various musical idioms. These included jazz vocabulary, neoclassical sounds, and elements from non-Western music like gamelan.

This work, titled "Hors d’oeuvre" (a word already naturalized into Japanese), was composed by the young Mayuzumi in 1947 while he was a student at Tokyo University of the Arts. According to Mayuzumi himself, it was an attempt to "express in a purely musical way" the "lively dynamism" and "vitality brimming with life" inherent in jazz. Although jazz was known in Japan even before the war, at the time of composition, which was soon after the war, it swept through the public as fresh music symbolizing victorious America. Mayuzumi himself even participated as a pianist in the jazz band "Blue Coats" for a period.

The work consists of two movements. The first movement is a "Boogie-Woogie" with a short prelude, instructed to be played with a swung rhythm except for the introductory part. The second movement is a "Rumba," which was later arranged for orchestra and became the orchestral work Symphonic Mood (1950). This small piece can truly be said to serve as an "hors d'oeuvre" in the trajectory of Mayuzumi's creative output, a composer who left a significant mark on the history of Japanese composition.