Japanese Transitionals

[akronmarbles]

The online Japanese database only goes back in full to the 1950's....

[Steph]

Good work, Brian!

[akronmarbles]

So....0213080 was registered on 31 January 1930 and was applied for in 1929 - so it looks real clear that the Santa Claus brand glass marble trademark is from 1929.

[Steph]

That's fantastic to hear.

Now you're making me curious about what those other items are.

But wow. Good stuff!

A wee bit earlier than my working theory for when Japanese transitionals came from. But not too far off. 29 makes more sense than the 1940's did, or 1950's.

Yay!

[akronmarbles]

So who here can read Japanese?

[winnie]

Thanks Brian,for digging,I will follow a course in Japanese LOL.

I have always believed that they are older than 1950,it may be that they have been made over a long time periode.

[hdesousa]

Thanks for the information akronmarbles.

BTW, many of the characters are Chinese (perhaps before modern Japanese script?).

http://www.logoi.com/notes/japanese_chinese_writing.html

So should be easier to get a translation.

[ann]

I can read numbers up to 3 and I know the characters for "man" and "horse." Or "house," depending on how you raise your voice at the end.

I quit right there (ran out of classroom screaming).

[ducksandgeese]

Hi. Everybody. I have been lurking in the back reading and looking all the postings for some times now. Thank you.

The Santaclaus Brand was applied for a trademark on 1929, Feb. 25th, and public annauncement was made on 1929, April 9th by Yasuda( last name) Ukick(first name, not sure of pronouncenent).

It is written in Japanese. Yumi.

[Al Oregon]

Great research by all. That helps put some more date information towards the transitional types. Thanks.

[Steph]

And thank you, Yumi!

I guess there's still a question of whether marbles started being sold under the Santa Claus brand right away. I don't suppose they're mentioned in the trademark app?

[akronmarbles]

application date
February 25, 1929

registration date
April 9, 1929

the name of the person (not the company)
安田卯吉 Yasuda(surname) Ukichi(male given name)

the address
大阪府堺市少林寺町西四丁二十六番地
4-26, Shōrinji-chō Nishi, Sakai-shi, Osaka
(present 大阪府堺市堺区少林寺町西 Shōrinji-chō Nishi, Sakai-ku, Sakai-shi, Osaka)
The number of the address "4-26" doesn't exist now, probably due to the land readjustment, the rearrangement of the address number or something.

registration date
August 21, 1929

renewal application date
May 20, 1949

renewal registration date
January 26, 1950

the name of the person
安田アイ Yasuda(surname) Ai(female given name)

the address
大阪府南河内郡国分町大字玉手299
299, Tamate, Kokubu-chō, Minami-Kawachi-gun, Osaka
(present 大阪府柏原市 Kashiwara-shi, Osaka)

representative, lawyer
鎌田嘉之
Kamata(surname) Yoshiyuki(male given name)

[Steph]

Bump coz I'm so excited by seeing foreign-looking marbles in a 1929 ad in that vending machine thread.

My paradigm is slipping. Maybe prematurely but bumping anyway.

[eggie]

I know people who have Japanese transitionals back to 1922 (from old people). Some believe that they were made from 1915.

[Steph]

That is very believable to me. I'm not sure when that started being so believable to me -- I didn't used to think it possible -- but now it makes sense.

If transitionals were in 10's and 20's, that would leave room for patch style marbles in the 30's.

Then the war.

Then the well-known and well-made cat's eyes.

[J_Ding]

This has been a highly interesting thread, and great to see so much sleuthing going on. I'm with others here, in that I really am interested in the history and times of production of early marbles. I like to know the time frame of mibs. I've always treated these as earlier, pre-depression mibs, but not really sure how far to go back. Is there a possibility that these might have been produced earlier (maybe just a few years, and/or perhaps concurrently) and re-marketed? John

[lstmmrbls]

Some of the packaging that the handgathered marbles come in may suggest a later date for at least some? went looking and all I found was this

[ann]

Maybe Winnie will post her wonderful box of transitionals here . . . Because of that box, I just recently loosed all mine, which had been carefully separated by pontil type, into one big herd, and ignoring pontils altogether, tried a sort according to my perception of the glass. It was interesting. What looked like the poorer glass had transparent-colored bases, and what looked like better glass was both transparent-based and opaque-based.

In those categories, tried a kind-of-sort by skillfulness-of-nine.

I've left them there like that for the time being. Don't know if I've learned anything by it or not.

[hdesousa]

Saw this on Ebay,unfortunately was too late too bid on it.

Notice the yellow ones,it seems they have a translucent base,that I have never seen before.So there was a glass factory "Yasuda"that has made transitionals.

FWIW, this was on eBay last week, same trademark number:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/100-Count-Cat-Eyes-Santa-Claus-Marble-Box-/161888616226

[cheese]

I still think this is a bit newer than 1929. The printing, box, and graphics look newer to me. The addition of the picture with cateyes by hdesousa gives me more confidence to guess that the transitionals are probably from the 1940s-1950s or so. I suspect this company made these transitionals all the way up until they figured out how to make cateyes.

[Steph]

The graphics changed between the transitional box and the cat's eye box.

And the label stuck to the box instead of being part of the box _might_ indicate a change in how packaging was done -- maybe something more expensive to something more generic. But if this second thought is a stretch, we still have a modernization -- and Westernization -- of the logo to account for.

[Steph]

We still need to contact someone with knowledge of Japanese cultural history to find out when they used two-digit phone numbers.

[ann]

. . . we still have a modernization -- and Westernization -- of the logo to account for.

I agree. Just look at the change of eye type from the early Santa to the later one . . .

[lstmmrbls]

It was different for every city. We need to know for Osaka

[Steph]

I wonder if the two words after the 59 are also part of the phone number .... like how people here used to start phone numbers with words like "Murray Hill".

Anyone feel like reaching out to a professor of Japanese culture at a university?