English Translation

1ya cultural status of Japanese music a particularly high. But this music has not developed. Due to its attachment to the religious ceremonial it has remained at the level of previous centuries. It is therefore only too understandable and quite natural that the Japanese people, when suddenly Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and the many beautiful German folk songs came to my home country, were seized by a real hunger for absolute music. When Western culture invaded Japan around 1860, the enthusiasm of the Japanese musicians for Beethoven was no less than that of the philosophers for Kant. And that Beethoven became "people's goods" in Japan so quickly, probably also in large part radio and gramophone are involved. When the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation first broadcasted in 1925, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was played with the newly greened symphony orchestra under my direction. Japan, as we know, is the world's largest record consumer (the sale of records in Japan was as large as the consumption of all of Europe — except England — in just a year before the World War). It is indeed so, dear friend, that some record companies in Japan have built up existence only through the production of Beethoven records. In Japan there are not only all Beethoven's sonatas and chamber music works on records, but also the "Missa Solemnis". Ten different recordings can be acquired from the Fifth Symphony in Tokyo. A true record collector - many of whom exist in Japan - will also have ten-fold such a symphony. Who is now a record collector in Japan? Dear friend, this is not only a European educated upper class. I can confirm from my own experience that the music of German classics has penetrated into the hearts of the simplest people. Let me tell you a little experience: during a wall in the Japanese mountains, I passed by a lonely farmstead, from whose open window the sounds of a Mozart symphony penetrated. Interested I entered. The farmer, a very simple man, was very happy when he heard who his visitor was. He told me that he had recently heard the Mozart Symphony, which was just played, on the radio under my direction, and he found it so beautiful that he ran for hours to the next city to buy it on records. He then proudly showed me his record treasure, a whole series of Beethoven Symphonies and Mozart Divertimenti. Is that not enough proof that the music of great German masters is not only reserved to a small circle in Japan? You can believe me that in Japan every schoolchild today knows the name of Beethoven and that he is also a term for the most unmusical child as for example the names of the other great Germans: Friedrich the Great, Bismarck or Kant. Already in the reading books of the elementary schools stands the genesis of the "Mondschein sonata", you 16