An East-Asian “Sonic Empire”: the record company Nippon Victorand its role in global jazz history, 1927-1954

Record companies played an important role in disseminating jazz
around the world during the interwar period and can be described as
“empires of sound”. Nippon Victor was founded in 1927 as a
Japanese branch of The Victor Talking Machine Company and
became a prominent player in the East Asian jazz market by using
the Japanese empire as its base. This research aims to study the
changing role of Nippon Victor as an actor in disseminating jazz in
Japan between 1927 and 1954, and its impact on the regional
development of the music. It takes as hypothesis that during this time
the popularity of jazz music in Japan and its empire was to a certain
extent tied to the transnational working of Nippon Victor and its
interaction with the state represented in the form of the Home
Ministry, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association and, during the US
occupation, the General Headquarters in the context of constant
political change that balanced between cosmopolitanism, imperialism
and democracy. This PhD project investigates unique and hitherto
unused source material from Japan and the United States and the memoirs of prewar Nippon Victor
management that have been published by former company
employees.