shiroaiko

Thanks @aussie! 😃 I hope to learn much as possible from Tokiko. Please look forward to it.

Today I received a letter from Maxx's father, who turned 93 years old this January. The letter was written by his wife. I am withholding his name for privacy. "Maxx's father was a seminary student preparing for the ministry around 1956 or 1957 when the company went bankruptcy. The cause was a trusted employee who took all the company funds and disappeared. This was something I heard from my mother-in-law many years later. After the bankruptcy Naoyuki spent his remaining years battling illness. He attended our church wedding in October 1963 in a wheelchair. 2 years later on the morning of 13 October 1966, he told his wife 'Smile, smile. Heaven is here,' and passed away that night at 10 p.m., surrounded by family."

After I came to know @MaxxNaoyukiYamasaki on this thread, I started to search for the Seike family through church connections. I contacted Nippon Sei Kou Kai (The Anglican Church in Japan) and St. John Church Osaka. Through exchanges by emails, letters and phones, I finally got in touch with Tokiko, the youngest daughter of Naoyuki, a couple of weeks ago on the phone. I will see her on 20 April for the first time, visiting her in Takarazuka, Hyogo. The good news for us is she has kept her father's marbles. She also mentioned, as the youngest in the family, she doesn't know much about her father's business, but she is willing to share the family's story.

@akroorka, thanks for letting me know😃 It looks like a Japanese pinch pontil to me... it is not perfectly round and the glass might be easier to get bruised.

I agree, Winnie's are the most beautiful examples! 😊✨ Then I will add several more from the Seike family. Back in December 2021, Reiko Seike sent me a box full of marbles being passed down in the family. Some got 3 ribbons, some stretch like vanes. These below are a local find.

Mines are Seike's bi-color veneered marbles from a local find. The marble of @stephenb looks to belong to this type. Mines are without metallic sheen.

Thanks for the comment, @bumblebee 😊🙏 Below is the article written by Mr. Morito for the Nikkei on 13 Apr. 2000.

@stephenb @Alta Thank you so much! I felt especially honored, since a marble story of Yukoh Morito, Mr. Marble in my country, was also featured in the same section many years before. In the article, he talks about his love of marbles, Japan's Marble Association that he started in 1992, and friends and people he came across in connection with something spherical. His curiosity led him to adventures.🙏

All the striped transparents I have also got stripes on both sides, but the marble still looks like a German to me. The stripes also has a loop in them, and it would be a trait that is seen on German marbles from time to time. Even the newer ones from Ilmenau got a loop in them. (but they are inside for these marbles.)

@LevvyPoole I hope whoever buys the package will open it and show us what's inside here in the forum. 🙏

Hi @LevvyPoole, many thanks for letting me know the find!😃🙏 The package says made in Germany, and it would be Hopf product. Unfortunately the price is too expensive for me. I took screenshots of the listing.

@Chad G. @akroorka You're welcome!😃🙏 These are the connections of Tokunaga and marbles I have collected so far. 1. In 1892 Tamakichi Tokunaga succeeded in making marble stopper bottles after studying an original Codd bottle from the UK for 5 years. His bottle business obviously needed supply of glass marbles. 2. In 1907 Yoshijiro (Tamakichi's eldest son) filed Utility Model No. 17091 fo Glass Ball Making Hood for a torch. The earliest marbles we recognize as being made in Meiji or Taisho era have traits of lampworked marbles. 3. Tokunaga's marble stopper bottle with a stamp of 1922 has a lampworked marble. It has a round section of a glass stringer on the surface. The section is also ground. 4. In 1916 Toyojiro (the 2nd son of Tamakichi) partnered with Juma Asayama and established a bottle making company. (Official Gazette, 1916 Oct 21) Juma is a glass maker who invented a pair of rollers with corresponding molds. (Registered Utility Model No. 40534) Ohajiki flast marbles with embossed designs and marbles were made by this system. (Kenji Nakanishi, "Glass and its Techniques/硝子其成法", 1940) Juma’s rollers are even set with an automatic glass feeding system. ("History of Japanese Modern Ceramic Industry, part 4: Glass Industry/日本近世窯業史", 1917) 5. According to "Stories of Bottles/ びんの話” by Koji Yamamoto, Tokunaga used marbles made by Seike factory. Naoyuki Seike started making machine rolled marbles in Hanaten, Osaka since 1924. 6. In 1959 Zenshiro (Tamakichi's 4th son) took over Shuichi Utsunomiya's Oba Glass Mfg.. Utsunomiya previously worked for Seike before the war as a plant manager. After the war Utsunomiya's business manufactured both bottles and glass marbles.

I just posted a report of my Osaka trip. According to Koji Yamamoto's "The Story of Bottles/ びんの話”, Tokunaga once used glass marbles from Seike factory, but the source of this information is still unclear to me.

Before I traveled to Osaka, @MaxxNaoyukiYamasaki reached out to me in "Duck Marbles from the Seike family" thread. Through him, I learned that some of Naoyuki’s children had inherited his inventive spirit and chosen careers in engineering. The Tokunaga family shares this same spirit of innovation: Tamakichi’s sons obtained numerous patents and utility models, and Takashi holds a PhD and works in chemical research. Takashi’s father has also been involved in a nanorobotics startup.

I took an overnight trip to Osaka earlier this week on 19-20. It started with a phone call from Ryotaro Matsuno, the owner of Matsuno Industry (the only marble maker in the country), inviting me to join a special meeting: he was going to meet a descendant of Tamakichi Tokunaga for the first time. Tamakichi is the man who made Japan's first marble-stopper bottles in 1892, after 5 years of studying an original British Codd bottle. After his death at 34, his family continued the business and the company eventually became one of the major glassworks, introducing advanced bottle making techniques from the US and Germany. Below are photographs of Tokunaga factories from a book "The Tokunaga Brothers: Four Key Figures in Japan’s Glass Industry/硝子工業界の重鎮　徳永氏四兄弟の巻”. The main factory in Yoriki-cho, Osaka (near the city center) East factory and Asahi-bashi Factory (both in Osaka) Amagasaki factory and Moji factory (both outside Osaka) Because every Codd bottle needs a glass marble, Tamakichi's success also meant the starting point of marble manufacture in Osaka. I had been collecting fragmentary references to Tokunaga and marbles for years, so I felt a honor to meet a member from the family. The man holding the bottle is Takashi Tokunaga (from the bloodline of Tamakichi’s third son). The bottle is a rare Tokunaga ramune bottle stamped “1922,” kindly lent by my collector friend Yoshinori Kakizaki. Takashi was so happy to see it, as no such old bottles have been passed down in his family. Takashi also mentioned that his father keeps a company history book that is carefully preserved. He offered to try persuading his father to let me read it. If I learn anything related to marble history, I hope to share an update in this thread. We ended up talking happily until the izakaya's (Japanese-style pub) closing time, and before we parted we exchanged contact information. During my marble research these years I come to realize people who are willing to meet and talk are not many. I’m grateful to the openness of Takashi and Ryotaro who kindly let me join the gathering.