●Nathan Shiga: August 20, 2017

Japan’s first full orchestra was organized about a hundred years ago in the Meiji period and a recent discovery suggests it had a pair of imported timpani – an evidence of how western musical instruments found their ways into Japan, a survey revealed recently.

The survey revealed that the drums were first stored in the storage of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and later acquired 45 years afterward by a timpani player.

The drums have a name Junker engraved thereupon indicating a person by that name donated the drums to the institution’s predecessor in 1904.

Keiko Takii, formerly professor of the university and expert on music in the Meiji period, identifies the donator a German August Junker who trained and conducted the new-born symphony orchestra.

It is documented that the drums were first used in a performance in 1904 to kick off full-scale commercial orchestral performance in Japan.

Prof. Takii comments:

“The set of timpani are unmistakably ones of the oldest ever used in actual performance and prove how western orchestral music found its way into Japan.”

The timpani will be exhibited on October 15 at a concert scheduled in Ueno, Tokyo.

These drums are different in size: the larger one is 71 centimeters in diameter and 43 centimeters in height and the smaller one 67 centimeters and 40 centimeters, respectively. On the body of each timpani is engraved PRESENTED TO TOKYO ACADEMY OF MUSIC BY PROF. A. JUNKER 1904. (16.7.2017)

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