Greetings for an exta super New Year for you out there on the museum-web!
There was a short article in today's nespaper of an interesting museum which op
ened last year.
The Hirano Museum of Local Sounds offers nothing but unique and rare archival s
ounds of the past daily life of downtown Osaka through its only exhibit= an old
 telephone set. Some may argue this is not museum defined by orthodox theory. W
ell, let's forget it for a moment. The mission of this unique museum which was
established and currently run by a local NPO group is to collect, preserve and
offer only various sounds of daily life of the local area which had dissapeared
 already but still preserved in the memories of senior citizens. The museum say
s they are giving the senior citizen the nostaligia of their past. There are so
me ideas that their unique service of offering sounds of the past life maybe us
ed as a means of reminisce therapy such as they do at the Museum of Childhood i
n Edinburgh and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. Once you pick up the receiver of
 the old telephone made in the 1930s (the only exhibit...), recorded sounds and
 noises such as squeeks of a bicycle brakes; "Maido!",a cheerful voice greeting
 customers at a small local restaurant; sounds of filling a paper bag with frie
d rice cookies "okaki; voices of the postman delivering mails to families; etc.
 Certainly some sounds are the subject of oral history. address: Hirano Museum
of Local Sounds. Zenkoji, 4-12-21, Hirano-honmachi, Hirano-ku, Osaka City, Japa
n.

Ryo
Yasui R.
Museum Consultant
1458-103, Shinkouji-machi,
Machida-shi, Tokyo 195-0051
JapanAkifumi
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