Authored By The Marble Avenger
The Early Years
Japanese marbles have been documented in books dating back to the Heian (794-1185) period. Adults gambled with marble games in the Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi, and Momoyama periods. Gambling with marbles was banned in the Edo (1603-1867) period. Sometime late in that time period marble games were adopted as a children’s games. The children would pull the marble from a Codd neck bottle and play with it. The Meiji (1868-1912) period saw a great deal of popularity and continued until about the 1950’s when automated production of cheaper toys gave children something new and different to play with. Legos became popular, Mr. Potato head was invented in 1952. The skateboard was invented in 1958 and the famous Barbie came out in 1959 further changing the way kids played.
The 1920s And Beyond
The Nippon Special Glass Ball MFG Co LTD had the Duck Marbles product and began in Hanaten-Cho, Osaka City in 1924. Naoyuki Seike and his team invented a semi-automatic process to make marbles. By the late 40’s they had more than 20 patents and production was over 50,000,000 worldwide. Shortly after the factory went bankrupt and changed names in 1948. Naoyuki died in 1963 at age 90.
Ukichi Yasuda had patents dating back to 1929 for Bracelet manufacturing devices. The first trademark registration was submitted on August 21, 1929. In the “Zenkoku Koujou Tsu-u-ran” translated ” The National Factory Registry” (1939).
An application was submitted for the Suikin bracelet manufacturing tool on June 15, 1929. Suikin is a mixture of gold chloride, sulfur and Turpentine. This liquid is used for decorating purpose on ceramics and glass giving the marbles their luster. The Santa Claus Yasuda Brand made glass bracelets and other glass products since 1929 but also did marbles.
Santa Clause Marbles
Yasuda’s business in Shiba started in September of 1933 creating glass “marble” balls. On April 11, 1934, a patent #4204 for a Glass Ball Manufacturing Machine application was submitted. A public notice was later sent out on April 9, 1935. Ukichi Yasuda had invented and patented his own marble machine securing his place in the glass marble industry.
Japanese Marble History Moving Forward
After the war there were 17 marble manufacturers in Japan. Ukichi Yasuda and Matsuno Kogyo, who owned another large marble company teamed up and dropped the price of marbles to 7 sen from 12 sen (1 sen equaled 1/100 of 1 Yen). This bankrupted most of the competition after three months and the rest after a year. Only two marble factories remained in Osaka, Yasuda and Matsuno Kogyo. They agreed to raise the prices and business thrived having to expand and up production for both.
Ukichi Yasuda had five marble locations over the years and in 1952 he moved to his last location in Tamate (299 Tamate, Kokubu-cho, Osaka). Ukichi’ s “Yasuda Export Glass Factory” produced Nishiki-dama and Hajiki. Nishiki-dama is a Japanese name for cat’s eye marbles meaning beautiful textile exported from ancient China and Hajiki is flat type marbles.
This is just one marble manufacturer, over time there have been 38 factories that I know of. There is so much more to learn. Have fun and do your research. There is always something new to learn in The Marble Universe.
Written by The Marble Avenger ( Facebook- Mar Ble Aven Ger).
Photo Credit: The Yasuda Transitionals are courtesy of Robert Block; www.marbleauctions.com
Special acknowledgment to Shiroaiko, a woman named Aiko that did a ton of research in Japan for the other pictures.