The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here's a preview- (with permission from Nathan at the APS)

It's going to be in the September 2025 issue for people interested to read it!!

Congrats! That’s awesome.

Very nice of you!

Awesome Millie! Can't wait to read it at the end of this month!

Yay! Thanks guys!!

Very good! I hope you also found new information about the US recordings of the Columbia Phonograph Co. from 1902, likely involving artists from the local Japanese diaspora. This small series of recordings, I assume from the fall of 1902, is comprising catalogue numbers 959-967.

I show number 966 from my collection with a song from the kabuki play “Ume no Haru”, translated as "The Spring in the Japanese Apricot", premiered in 1827. The second line below the center hole reads "Kazura oka". The translation of these two characters is not entirely clear to me. It could refer to the artist or the role in the play.

You've translated it mostly right but I know NOTHING about Japanese stage & screen sadly.

By the way the article is "A History of Japanese 78s" by Millie Nakamura

Yay!!!

[quote=m_nakamura post_id=362106 time=1754262369 user_id=37254]
By the way the article is "A History of Japanese 78s" by Millie Nakamura
[/quote]

So if you ignore the recordings from 1902, you were certainly considering the Japanese Columbias from 1903.

I'm sorry? I don't think I understand what your asking.

The earliest Japanese releases I found in my research were domestic ones from 1898. The earliest discs I saw domestically were from 1902 and in Japan 1903.

Then that was a misunderstanding. So you're not just considering disc records that were recorded in Japan.

I don't know of any Japanese records from 1898 and I am looking forward to your article. Japanese disc records, that is at least the design of its tags, yellow with emblem, glued on the back of such discs and the front of its envelopes, were conceived by the German gramophone factory Kämmer, Reinhardt & Co. already in 1890, but none was ever released.