The Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku and the Archeophone


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TOKYO - PARIS - TOKYO

The going-and-return of 11 cylinders between their historical site and the Archeophone home
and the
Project on The Preservation and digitization of Wax Cylinders in the Meiji-era

The going-and-return of 11 cylinders

The Archeophone at the Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku

The Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku http://www.geidai.ac.jp/museum, the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, (formerly The Tokyo Fine Arts School founded in 1887) collects art materials for education and research. Today these materials include the collections coming from the Faculty of Music (formerly the Tokyo Music School).

It is now one of Japan's largest collections with about 28,000 pieces of music materials and of Japanese modern arts. This collection is preserved in an inter-university research institute, the University Art Museum which opened to the public in 1999.

The University Art Museum has decided to transfer the sound of wax cylinders onto digital media and honored the Archeophone by choosing it to do the work. Mrs. Chicaco Matsumura, a Research Associate at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and Mr. Ryo Furuta, associate professor, went to my place with eleven very precious cylinders wrapped and packed in a beautiful way. These cylinders are the results of ethnomusicology studies made in the 1900's.

Left : "fragile, handle with care" - center : the packed cylinders - Right : example of a commercial Japanese cylinder

The information and datasheet about a cylinder. Each cylinder of the collection is described this way.

Chicaco Matsumura, during the transfer operation.

Detail on a common commercial Edison 2 minute wax cylinder.

Thank you for your visit !

Paris, le 18 avril 2008

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Invited by the Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, I finally had the chance to digitize almost 200 cylinders in the Museum in October-November 2008.
This work was as a conclusion of the Project on The Preservation and digitization of Wax Cylinders in the Meiji-era, sustained by Grants in aid for Scientific Research in the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
This project mainly consisted in an advanced enquiry about the cylinder preserved in public and private collections in Japan and worldwide. Above the digitization with the Archeophone, it was closed by a paper publication in 2009:
Masato SATSUMA (Dir.) ; Chikako MATSUMURA (Ed.) ; Project on The Preservation and digitization of Wax Cylinders in the Meiji-era, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, 2009, 123 p.


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