Japan Society of Fairfield County
Shaberu Kikai, Oct. 24, 2007
The Beginnings of Telecommunications in Japan 1875-1900
On October 24th 2007, The
Japan Society of Fairfield County and Western Connecticut State
University were treated to a lecture on early Japanese communications
technology by Dr. Thomas G. Hedberg, a neurophysiologist associated
with Albert Einstein Medical School. Dr. Hedberg, who has shamelessly
used frequent business trips to Japan to study 19th Century
telecommunications titled the presentation “Shaberu Kikai” (or more
precisely: “kikai de shaberu”) which, in Japanese, means "talking with
machines".
In the 21st Century the legions of Tokyo
teenagers texting each other ferociously at every other Starbucks
rarely do anything but talk with machines. However there’s nothing
particularly new about this; in fact, anyone who has seen “The Last
Samurai” knows that the final days of the Japanese Shogunate were a
time of social and political strife punctuated by the heroic but doomed
final stand of the samurai class. Less well known is the fact that some
of these samurai wound up slicing into their opponents under the
shadows of actively humming telegraph poles. A decade or so later a few
would shout recollections of their fiercest battles into the gaping
horns of wax-cylinder phonographs.
When Commodore Perry opened Japan in
1854 he left a number of technical gifts which showcased American
technology. These were avidly studied by the Japanese and quickly
influenced their view of the western world.
An interesting presentation of the Perry expedition is on MIT's
Visualizing Cultures site: Black Ships
and Samurai.
The first telephone call conducted in Japanese
occurred in Boston in January 1877 when visiting Japanese students were
given an opportunity to use the new instrument in a demonstration that
would be difficult to fake. Phonograph recordings were popular in Japan
and the Victor corporation's operations in Japan grew into JVC. The
first Japanese-American joint technology venture was started in 1899
and has grown into the global electronics giant NEC. The presentation
also featured rare century-old moving pictures of geishas made
following the Chicago World’s Fair, vibrant sound recordings from the
dawn of audio technology, and what is probably the first anime.
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