Lecture
Feedback: How the
Hearing Aid Molded a
Regime of Rhythm in the
Postwar Period

Frank Mondelli
PhD Candidate,
Stanford University

33

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

Today, I’ll be bringing us back to the 1940’s and ‘50s in Japan to discuss how thehistory of hearing aids intersects with music, hearing-impaired communities, andthe development of the commercial sound hardware that we all still use today.
Hearing-impaired People, Music, and Acoustics
In the wake of World War II, a number of opinions published in contemporary
newspapers advocated proper intervention and the self-cultivation of deaf people.
One such opinion reads as follows: “In order to live as human beings and cultivatethemselves, deaf people must also study hard” (Takeda 1953).
In that case, what kinds of intervention could develop hearing-impaired
people’s quality of life? Newspaper authors argued that bringing music to thehearts of hearing-impaired people, especially children, could serve to ameliorate
the debilitating dehumanizing effects of deafness. Music would improve, not only
spoken communication (kōwa), but perhaps, more importantly, hearing-impaired
people’s abilities to live as proper humans. These authors’ opinions were wellreflected in events, as seen in Figure 1. You can see some musicians, some cabinet
speakers, and a logo for a company called Rion, which I will discuss. This particular
event was called “Gathering for Enjoying Good Music through Good Sounds” (Yoi
ongaku o yoi oto de tanoshimu tsudoi). Other events had titles like the “Meeting forじんるい けんBookle t vol. 834Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

Figure 1: A Rion “stereo record concert” in Ginza, Tokyo (Rion 2019, 66)

Listening to Sounds,” (Oto o kikukai) and the “Gathering for Relishing Life throughBeautiful Sounds” (Utsukushī oto de seikatu o tanoshimu tsudoi).
However, events like these were not ordinary concerts. They brought together
local politicians, hearing aid firms, material scientist researchers, doctors, and thegeneral public for unique multi-act events. These events mixed together lectures on
the personal benefits and possibilities of hearing aids. With record player concerts,
they would often play folk music, and later on, included classical music. They would
mix this with musicology lectures and lectures from audiologists, and so on. They
were hosted by Japan’s largest hearing aid firm at the time, Rion, with the intention
being to demonstrate the future soundscapes that hearing aids could bring, notonly to deaf and hearing-impaired persons, but also Japanese culture, at large.
Three questions
I want to explore three questions related to this phenomenon. First, how did
Japanese hearing aid makers come to host these kinds of musical events in the ruinsof the postwar period after World War II? In this talk I’ll be defining the postwar
period as the 1940’s through the end of the 1950’s. Second, I want to explore thequestion: How did hearing aid makers and their allies shape ideas of collective
listening to deaf users and the general public? And third: How have the domestic
and transnational repercussions of these ideals impacted on listening, today?
35

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

Through exploring these questions, I’m going to argue that the Japanese hearing
aid was deeply intertwined in the politics of postwar rebuilding, deaf school
pedagogical practices, and the commercial sound world, in which it structured
human senses, sensoria, to promote ideals of individual self-actualization throughcollective musical listening. In addressing these questions, I aim to present
a largely hidden array of historical materials that underline the importance ofthe hearing aid to political, social, and material cultures in Japan and beyond, up
until the present. Finally, I would like to share with you how seemingly unrelatedsocial actors, in the name of social good, used media and music to try to train
deaf persons through physical and sensory means to improve their quality of life
according to particular metrics.
Hearing Aids and Music
I’ll begin with the first question: hearing aids and music. I describe how, forcorporate entrepreneurs struggling after the war, hearing aids and related soundtechnologies promised a useful and potentially lucrative avenue of transitioning
war time acoustics research into more democratically friendly technologies that
had the added benefit of “saving deaf children.”
These ambitions of the manufacturers, though, were not actualized without
the help and cooperation of deaf schools. They had to coordinate with thesedeaf schools as their teachers generally sought to use hearing aids for their own
pedagogical purposes of teaching oral language—spoken communication—often
at the expense of Japanese Sign Language or JSL. This is, of course, a completely
separate language from Japanese, with its own grammar.
I’ll focus primarily on a firm called Rion. I’m using Rion because they were oneof the largest and most prominent, but the story can be generalized to most of theother major players in hearing aid manufacturing at this time. I will describe how
Rion ended up sending representatives to tour the ruins of postwar Japan. These"PR tours" sent representatives to many places, including deaf schools, hospitals,
electronic shops, local government offices, black markets, and so on. They’d go
to strengthen, what I call, “multilateral coalitions,” and create organizations tostrengthen the hearing aid’s place in society and, of course, in the commercial
じんるい けんBookle t vol. 8

36Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

market. These are what I call “socio-technical coalitions,” which consisted of
manufacturers, science researchers, medical researchers, deaf educators, etc.
Understanding how these coalitions formed will set the stage for discussing thehearing aids’ use within deaf classrooms and its relation to commercial markets.
By October 1945, postwar Tokyo was more or less in ruins. The American
occupation had just entered into full swing. American-supplied goods, like wheat
and scrap metal, had found their ways into the tens of thousands of stalls inTokyo’s black markets—into the hands of vendors, entrepreneurs, business people,
and, of course, ordinary people. This ravaged environment presented difficult
challenges and opportunities for the many researchers and business owners, who
had previously contributed to Japanese militaristic efforts. These companies,
which had preexisted during the war, found themselves in a totally different
environment, needing to find cheap ways to transition existing resources fromwartime applications to a peace time commercial market. This occurred within anenvironment of widespread poverty, a collapsed infrastructure, changing politicaland social norms, and constrained access to raw supplies. Perhaps, concerning thelast point most importantly, Rion was one of these companies.
Rion had roots in material supplies and research since the Japanese occupationof Korea, going back closer to the beginning of the 20th century. The modern
iteration of the corporation began when the founder inherited, from his father,a metal mining business in Korea. He subsequently established a research andproduction base in Tokyo with his acquaintance, Satō Koji, who was a professor atwhat was Tokyo Imperial University (now The University of Tokyo).
They built their research laboratory with logistical support from the Japanesemilitary and began to serve as a manufacturing plant for the army. For anumber of years, they supplied things like sensors (i.e., sonar equipment) to
detect enemy submarines and other sonic warfare and defense resources. Theirresearch encompassed theories of material structures, crystals, ultrasonic waves,underwater acoustics, and, perhaps, most importantly, for this discussion, theelectric properties of a material called “Rochelle salt.” Satō Koji was especiallyinterested in this salt, because he had learned from research conducted overseas
37

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

that it would be a better conductor of electricity than what was, at that time, themost common material for doing so, carbon. Satō Koji, as did many others, wanted
to move on from carbon electric products. In order to pursue those goals while,of course, still acting for the Japanese military, they organized weekly symposia
on various research topics in the material sciences. They were, apparently, so
influential that Rion came to be regarded as being the center of research intomaterial sciences during the war.
But the end of military business in 1945 presented a serious challenge to thefirm’s finances. They had enough to keep in business for a year or so, but after thatthey seriously needed something else to help stay afloat within the new peacetime
environment. They turned to Rochelle salt and its piezo-electric properties ofconduction by producing microphones, record player “pickups,” and similar
objects like that, while also producing raw materials for other electronics firms,
like the Japan Victor Company (JVC). They sold to a lot of businesses, mainly in the
district of Akihabara. While it is known, today, as a hub of Japanese electronics,
pop culture, and so on, at this time, it was a burgeoning center for electronics. Rion
developed their own reputation for creating especially high-quality materials forJapan’s humid summers. While they were happy with selling to other companies,
they needed a more consumer-oriented product line.
The hearing aid served this purpose. How did they stumble upon that? There
are a number of competing or complementary stories of how they ended up inhearing aid research and manufacturing. One of them is that the above-mentioned
Satō Koji happened to stumble upon a deaf school’s classroom in session. Around
15 or 20 years later, he wrote, in a journal article, that the visit to the deaf schoolleft a deep impression on him (Satō 1966). He mentioned how the teachers andthe children’s mothers, who were in the classroom together, were working undersqualid and dilapidated conditions. Nevertheless, there was some humanity, which
was very rousing and inspirational. Afterwards, he went to the Japan Academy in
Ueno, Tokyo, and read some magazines that said that 70% of students in American
deaf schools (in Japan) had some kind of residual hearing and that this residual
hearing could very well be served by hearing aids.
じんるい けんBookle t vol. 8

38

Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

This was more than reason enough for Rion to try their hand at it. By 1948, they
produced what became affectionately known as the “personal lunch box hearingaid” (bentō bako). They developed and released this with the assistance of a grantfrom the Japanese government. The actual name of this device is the H-501. It
used the company’s pre-existing crystal earphones and some miniature vacuum
tubes, a pinch of Rochelle salt, and so on. Although it was not a large device, it was,however, not portable, in the comparative sense of today’s hearing aids.
Nevertheless, compared to hearing aids that had come before, it was, indeed,very small. This was especially so when compared to domestically manufactured
hearing aids such as the “tabletop hearing aid” (takujō hochōki), which, as the namesuggests, was placed on a table and stayed there. The hearing aid user was expected
to not move around with it. Compared to that, the “personal lunch box hearingaid” was a significant step forward. Rion branded this as Japan’s first domesticallymass-produced hearing aid, although it was probably more influential within thematerial sciences communities than in the consumer market. Nonetheless, by theend of 1948, they began selling these hearing aids. Rion also sold another kind oflarger hearing aid, called a “group hearing aid” (shūdan hochōki), that I’ll introduce
later. They had hit upon a major product for them.
They also decided that while selling to individuals was good, selling to deaf
schools was another avenue worth pursuing. Entering the deaf school market

Figure 2: The original H-501 hearing aid (right) and a later model, from the 1950s.
(Photo by Frank Mondelli)39

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

would put them in a good position, a few years later, that led to the formationof the coalition mentioned earlier. By 1950, the domestic market had dozens ofhearing aids and electronics firms vying for the market territory of hearing aids
in Japan, although it was largely limited to major urban centers, like Tokyo andOsaka. But a new legal development would spur domestic hearing aid companies
into even greater competition with one another, this was the 1949 “Law for the
Welfare of Physically Disabled Persons” (Shintai shōgaisha fukushi hō).
This law granted a new formalized system of categorizing, distributing, andsponsoring assistive technologies in Japan. This turned the already highly
competitive market for securing hearing aid territory into a race for, not only
which organization could develop and get those hearing aids out the fastest, but,also, who could secure the right for distribution to create regional monopolies
throughout Japan’s prefectures. Now, in reality, this law received a minisculeamount of the estimated implementation budget in its first year. That meantthat the market competition for these funds elevated. It’s not like this law totallychanged the landscape, in the way that it was supposed to, but it was incentive
enough for representatives from the different companies, who were then kind ofon the move, to secure as much market territory, as fast as they could.
Managers at Rion responded to these new legal and political developmentsby realizing they were selling their hearing aids mostly in the Tokyo area. They
decided it was necessary to send representatives across Japan, to try to secure as
much territory as possible. They started with, what they termed, “PR Tours,” to thenorth of Japan. As I mentioned, earlier, this brought representatives to municipal
offices, hospitals, clinics, deaf schools, and so on. They conducted the tours to bothadvertise their products and the passage of this new law.
These representatives had a lot of ground to clear. Municipal offices were
often unaware that the law existed. And otolaryngologists (ear, nose and throat
specialists) were unaware of the last ten or 15 years of electronics history andwere still thinking of hearing aids in terms of carbon electronics. To top it off, thetrip for these representatives was very physically arduous. They travelled throughdestroyed infrastructure and had only backpacks and, apparently, giant metal
じんるい けんBookle t vol. 840Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

boxes and crates with which to store the hearing aids, and a bunch of electronic
replacement parts, because these electronics were also easily breakable, so they had
to repair them all the time. But, despite all these difficulties, these representatives
later recalled that, in some cases, more or less half a century later, these trips were
worth it because of their visits to the deaf schools. There’s really something very
emotional that happened for them during their encounters that convinced them
their jobs were more than just jobs. They were morally just in creating a kind of
net increase of happiness in the world.
Through these PR tours, Rion and other manufacturers worked hard to maintainthe local connections they made during this time, over the next five to ten years.
Before long, they would end up playing prominent roles in the establishmentof formal deaf education groups with Satō Koji, whom I mentioned earlier. Kōji
headed up a deaf education research council, known as the Acoustical Society ofJapan.
Hearing aid manufacturers and their original connections (made on the tours)
frequently cooperated with one another to hold local events such as the “Listening
to Sounds.” This was first held in 1951, in a hospital in the Tohoku region in Aomori
Prefecture. It was a “record player” concert of folk and other popular music played(i.e., not by live musicians) through record players. They had a number of lectures
on hearing aids and how great they are for, again, a kind of the happiness of theworld and the potential to objectively, more or less, improve the lives of their
hearing aid users.
They were always trying to do these kinds of events with a local touch. For
example, at an event in Aomori Prefecture—which is, today, still known for thequality of the apples grown in the region—after concluding the “record player”
concert, the politicians went on stage, along with various representatives fromthe hearing aid companies, like Rion and Nihon Kōden, to present an apple. Thissymbolized their wishes to foster these newly forged connections, going forward.
Of all the meetings, it was the “Listening to Sounds” and other similar events,
which catered explicitly to a mixed audience of hearing aid users and non-users.
Subsequent events, like the gathering, “Enjoying Good Music Through Good41

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

Sounds,” cultivated an explicitly more general audience appeal. One of them
ended up becoming a series that stretched to 100 meetings, from the late ‘50s,
almost to the early ‘70s, which featured all kinds of celebrities and talents, tarento.
People, like the famed University of Tokyo music critic, Arisaka Yoshihiko, andIshī Shōko, who was a well-known singer and television talent at the time, would
show up to these events, give lectures, sing, and increase or attempt to increase
the general good will towards hearing aid companies. Sometimes, Coca-Cola would
join in these events as a sponsor. According to contemporaneous Rion employees,these events really drew all kinds of people—salarīman (salarymen), office workers,
older people, music critics, music fans, and the young. An internal company
memo noted that they weren’t quite sure whether these events would translate
into increased sales of hearing aids, necessarily, but that they found it was really
important to kind of cement their idea of “beautiful sounds” (utsukushī oto), forexample, and associate that with assistive technology and hearing aids. This really
fitted with the brand image that Rion had been working to cultivate.
Of course, public demonstrations or concerts of playback technology andplayback sound machines were nothing new to mid-century Japan. As historian
Alexandra Hui (2014) described, during the early 20th century, the Edison Company
held similar events with its own phonograph, in which they would hold elaborate“concerts” demonstrating the phonograph’s potential. Similar to Rion’s events,
they included music critics and would often have singers next to the phonographs,
in a sense, kind of tempting the audience to see if they could determine if there
really were any differences between the fidelity (i.e. quality) of the singer’s voice
versus that of the phonograph, which is what the Edison events were kind of allabout.
Alexandra Hui (2014) argued that the Edison recitals forged an “alienation ofmusic from music.” What Hui means is that it de-emphasized the musical expertise,
experience, and knowledge of music theory in favor of listening for fidelity. Bylistening for an imagined flawless fidelity, like the Edison phonograph events, Huireckoned that this new mode of listening inculcated “a selective deafness” to theobservable noise of the machines. In contrast, Japanese demonstrations, like the
じんるい けんBookle t vol. 842Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

meeting of “Listening to Sounds,” did not focus on the fidelity of record players.
Instead, as I mentioned, Rion had been making record player parts and pickups forsome time. So, they were not about advertising or tempting the audience there.
Instead, it was about showing the audience a kind of transformative vision, or atransformative kind of idea, of what the world could look like through enjoying
sound, in and of itself. Again, not even necessarily music, but beautiful sound. As aresult, they focused on the potential of music, especially to deaf ears.
Regime of Rhythm for the DeafThis mode of listening makes up part of what I call a “regime of rhythm.” Thismode of listening emphasized the perceived social good of record players andhearing aid devices by emphasizing the potential good of those devices to bring“humanity” to the deaf. And, furthermore, these concerts highlighted that the
project of bringing music to the deaf was not just a Tokyo thing, instead, it was
an affair linking Tokyo to the periphery, corporations to the government by their
public-private partnerships, acoustics to healthcare, electronics to education, andso on.
This ties into what I was talking about earlier with “multilateral coalitions.”
Everybody had a kind of stake in this project. In this sense, music is indeed
alienated from itself, but unlike Edison’s focus on the experience of flawlessfidelity, or anything like that, instead the new purpose focused on improving theimagined quality of the life for deaf persons. This is, I would argue, a central tenantof the “regime of rhythm.” Even though the public-facing concerts were meant
for general consumption, it was about advancing a particular kind of ideology ormode of listening. But even though these events inculcated appreciation for music
and the social possibilities in their audiences, they really only represent, so far,
one side of the story.
In order to explore the other side of this promoted mode of listening, we haveto flip the script, so to speak, to see what was being promoted to deaf people andhearing impaired people, at the time. It is necessary to investigate how hearing
aids and record players instituted sensory demands of deaf person’s ears, as wellas hearing person’s ears. Let’s go to deaf schools, then, to explore that.
43

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

In this section of the talk I’m going to examine how the technical demands ofhearing aids on different on users’ bodies and spaces were paired with political,
social, and cultural demands to develop oral/aural “skills of citizenship” and social
participation through musical and, especially, rhythmic forms of listening.
The use of hearing aids and related medical technologies, as a tool to promoteoral/aural language skills, to deaf students invited wide ranging effects on deaf
communities, not the least of which included the suppression of Japanese Sign
Language and the kind of institutionalization of mothers, in particular, performing
hearing training with their children.
The goal of much of this pedagogy was to inculcate a rhythmic mode of thinking.
Although, for deaf students, again, the focus on music was not a focus on music
appreciation for its own sake. It’s not through listening musically, so to speak,that we might conceptualize in terms of being an instrumentalist or working withmusic theory, or anything like that; it was, rather, the “regime of rhythm” that
was about inculcating an understanding of the supposed musicality of spoken
language and the supposed musicality and rhythmic (audible) nature of being ahuman being, quite literally.
Group hearing aids
Let’s start by talking about what are called “group hearing aids” (shūdan hochōki).
Now, group hearing aids were large boxes which amplified a single sound source
to multiple students’ headphones. They were very convenient for standardizing
pedagogical exercises and simultaneously transmitting such as group listening
sessions to an entire class under the supervision of teachers. They were used inother environments, like churches and other such places, allowing entire groups ofpeople, especially children, to hook up to the same sound source. Whether boughtfrom a domestic hearing aid manufacturer, donated by American occupiers, or
donated by charitable organizations such as the Helen Keller Committee, grouphearing aids were conceived of as an efficient method of getting children to engage
in sound-related activities, especially listening to music. Some children were noted
to have been scared by these devices, but, at least, according to the recollectionsof some teachers, the students gradually grew accustomed to them over time.
じんるい けんBookle t vol. 8

44Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

By 1950, these novel group hearing aids were starting to become increasingly
wireless, which was considered great for getting children up and moving. You canimagine dancing; you can imagine other kinds of rhythmic exercises, like that,funneled through the hearing aid.
But they weren’t just going to let group hearing aids proliferate without
standards. Eventually, several manufacturers and organizations formed researchcouncils and committees steering how hearing aids should be used. They ended up
doing a lot of research that is still very influential in Japan and elsewhere today,
such as the ideas of, well, you have to get kids hooked, more or less, on hearing
aids, as early as possible, to improve success rates. Such experimentation included
different kinds of hearing aid fittings to increase comfort and performance.
Function of Sounds
As I mentioned, before, while there were acoustic’s researchers present onthese councils, many other members were business people, CEOs, and public
policymakers who gathered together to explore more efficient delivery of hearing
to children. If it wasn’t clear, from the previous image, group hearing aids boasted
another crucial feature for those research groups. This was the ability to playrecords and, with them, facilitate the children’s appreciation of music.

Figure 3. Students listening to a group audiometer as a teacher watches on (Rion 1994, 60)

45

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age SeriesThis ability was hailed in 1951 by one writer of the famous Asahi Shinbun column,“Tensei Jingō,” who described, in very positive terms, the kind of what we now
call a “switch-on effect.” This can be seen in videos where children seemingly hearsound for the first time. The journalist explained how the children’s faces would
light up, filled with delight, and that it was emotive experience for all concerned.
Writers, like the Asahi Shinbun journalist, and others, at the time, observed thatthe group hearing aid was a useful tool to inculcate this idea of rhythm. Building
upon the preconceived concept of rhythm exercises, children were placed in a“rhythm band” (rizumu bando), which facilitated feeling the acoustic vibrations ofa piano while looking at spectrographs (i.e., visualizations of sound waves). These
ideas were used to get rhythm inculcated in the body, itself. The great thing aboutgroup hearing aids was that it enabled the educator to ensure all their students
heard the lesson in concert. For time, it was a fantastic method of bringing
standardization and efficiency into the classroom.
Learning through rhythm was intended to inculcate deaf people of all ages toaspire towards a better life. Rhythm and musicality, therefore, extended into therealm of Japanese Sign Language. An example of this relates to a popular film
from the 1960s, which is a melodrama about a deaf couple. However, the actors
are, themselves, not deaf. This becomes obvious, if one looks over the publiccommentary, when we see public critics writing things like, “While this actress
was hearing, her signing had a certain musical and rhythmic quality to it thatdeaf viewers might do well to observe.” “Musicality” is the word they used, whichrefers to the rhythmic way she signed. The sentiment appears to suggest that deaf
people could learn a thing or two from the “musicality” of non-deaf signing.
Educators and scientists were interested in music and hearing impairment,
not just in Japan, but, also, in the West. Various inventors, like Hugo Gernsback
and William Alsby Thomas, attempted to determine the relationship between
sound and music and the transmission between different sensory modalities
like sight and touch. Western manufacturers of hearing aids emphasized musicin their advertisements, suggesting that a previously deaf person might nothave appreciated music, because they couldn’t hear it, but the simple lifestyle
じんるい けんBookle t vol. 8

46

Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

adjustment of purchasing a hearing aid could lead to moral transformation beyond
an audible level.
As well, the British doctor and researcher, Phyllis Margaret Tookey Kerridge, whostandardized testing for measuring deafness, argued that music was invaluable fordiagnostic and therapeutic uses (Virdi and McGuire 2018).
The hearing aid’s relationship with music in postwar Japan demonstrates
important distinctions in the ways that the “regime of rhythm” mobilized musicon the (imagined) behalf of the deaf. While hearing aid manufacturers were
content with repurposing their research to broader consumer markets, such as
electronic devices, especially in music related hardware like transistor radios,
speakers, and amplifiers, music was not considered useful in technical design andstandardization in terms of hearing aids themselves, despite all the focus on musicas a tool of improvement for the deaf. The point is that the technical design ofJapanese hearing aids were, by and large, not necessarily meant to accommodate
musical listening.
Group hearing aids served as only one part of a larger complex of apparatuses
for teaching and theorizing about rhythm, but their ability to transmit soundfrom record players and the voices of teachers was, for many children, most ofwhom would not have had hearing aids at home, allowed them to propagate aregimented rhythmical mode of listening that supplemented the public-facing
events mentioned earlier, like Rion’s “Listening to Sounds” events. These publicconcerts trained audiences to imagine how such music might touch the hearts ofthe deaf, while group listening sessions for deaf pupils put those theories to work.
Hearing aids for listening to music
It took several decades before hearing aids, explicitly for musical consumption,
would be sold for hearing-impaired persons. It was not until 1993 that an
essay appeared in the Japan Medical Journal, in which a self-described “musicloving, hearing-impaired person” chronicled his failure to create a hearing aid
specifically geared toward appreciating music. As a result, he reached out tohearing aid companies urging them to produce a hearing aid capable of enabling
the appreciation of music.
47

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

He invited these companies to use his idea free of charge because his motivating
was not driven by personal financial profit. It took the rest of the decade, however,as, by the end of the 1990s, hearing aids explicitly marketed for music consumption
began to emerge.
If music were to be a tool for living a beautiful life and acquiring oral language,
where does music go to simply be music? In this final section, I discuss how
manufacturers, having gained experience building assistive technology devices forthe deaf, turned to researching other forms of commercial sound hardware meant
for the general public. In some cases the idea that music may save the deaf wasused as a selling point, but by the end of the 1950s, music, for hearing impairment
and deafness, was no longer pursued by companies like Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba,
etc. Many of these companies that embarked on this hearing aid product line
would, nowadays, not be commonly remembered for that.
In this section, I want to talk about this concept of what I call, “assistive erasure.”
This relates to how advertisements for assistive technology, for whatever reason,
declined. The role of hearing aids in shaping electronic research and discourse
was marginalized to the point of obscurity. Therefore, I will focus on Sony, as acase study, keeping in mind that these examples are similar to other corporations.
Forgotten Hearing Aids
While Rion and other manufacturers worked hard to expand their domestic
reach, Tokyo Tsūshin Kōgyō (TTK; Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute)
expanded its outlook internationally, reaching out to the United States. Formed
in 1946, by Ibuka Masaru and Morita Akio, TTK inherited some of the militaryequipment, as Rion did, due to having been contracted to supply military parts forthe war effort. From this platform, they set about establishing themselves in thecommunications industry.
Around the end of the 1940s, they embarked on a research trip to the UnitedStates, meeting with employees from Bell Labs. At the time, Bell was developingthe “transistor,” however, employees at Bell Labs considered that transistors
could only be used for used for hearing aids. And so, the story goes that they boldly
rejected Bell Labs’ offer to use the transistor for hearing aids. Instead, “Let’s makeじんるい けんBookle t vol. 8

48

Feedback: How the Hearing Aid Molded a Regime of Rhythm in Postwar Japan

radios,” Ibuka said. “As long as we are going to produce transistors, let’s makethem for a product anyone can afford to buy, or otherwise we’ll be wasting ourtime” (Sony). The accepted narrative is that everybody in the company became
enthused by Ibuka’s fiery passion, to make a transistor radio. Ultimately, theglobal company, Sony, emerged, resulting in much media attention. Here’s a quotefrom the Japan Times saying TTK, “is a shining rebuttal to the common argumentthat Japan can’t do anything but copy” (Oganesoff 1956). This account makes it
seem as if Sony never directly manufactured hearing aids and bravely went off in
a new direction in a gamble that ultimately paid off. That latter point might be thecase. However, it was equally true that Sony was very much involved in hearing
aid production during this time. One of the early transistor hearing aids Sonyproduced was called the Transiear. They advertised in deaf newspapers looking
for deaf men to work for them. They did charity drives. The list goes on and on.
They were a hearing aid “player” (in the market).
Ultimately, hearing aids were part of Sony’s emergence. This, however, relates towhat I refer to as “assistive erasure.” What I mean by this is that Sony’s productionof transistors, particularly the TR-55, resulted from gaining a production licensefrom Bell Labs. This, ultimately, helped other hearing aid manufacturers like Rion,
Panasonic, and Cortitone. However, over time, the corporate interest in producing
hearing aids decreased. This is what is meant by the term “assistive erasure.”
The transistor had far reaching consequences in Japan and the world. In addition
to Sony, other soon-to-be-large-corporations involved in this industry were
Matsushita Electric, Electric Industrial Company, Panasonic, Toshiba, and others.
All of these companies branched out into an ever-growing list of industries andsub-industries, with some especially moving into music.
In the 1940’s and ‘50s, Japanese hearing aids served, at least, in part, as an“assistive pretext” for sound and music electronics. By “assistive pretext,” I referto the idea that one might begin with noble intentions of, say, producing assistive
technology such as hearing aids for the impaired, but the company pivoted toward
the pursuit of profit, instead.
49

じんるい けんBo o kl e t v o l . 8

Disability and Japan in the Digital Age Series

I am not arguing that modern music and sound technologies are a necessaryconsequence of the history of assistive technologies, but rather simply thatthese histories are interlinked, and that such histories deserve further study.
Nonetheless, these ideas, this “regime of rhythm,” and these modes of listening
served to connect sound hardware with the social mission of curing deafness, or,at least, advocating for an appreciation of the social benefits of music.
What are the takeaways from all this? Well, first, I argue that the Japanesehearing aid was inextricably intertwined in the politics of postwar rebuilding
and public spectacle, such as the record player concerts and similar events. They
were intertwined in deaf school pedagogical practices and in commercial soundcultures of Japan and subsequently, the world. Furthermore, today, I’ve introduced
an idea describing a mode of trained listening from the time called the “regime ofrhythm.”Finally, I want to emphasize the “hidden histories” of assistive technologies
that might be lurking around the corner in corporate and material and media
histories, where one might not expect to find it. I consider this to be an important
take-home-point from today’s talk, which only scratches the surface of the social,
cultural, and technological dimensions of hearing aids and related technologies.
Also, it is worth reflecting on what’s changed and what really hasn’t. In Tokyo,
today, the venue known as Rion Hall continues to host music and dance cultural
eventsMany of these firms were connected with university research institutes andcame from a multilateral collection of backgrounds, different parties, each with
their different. Another thing, different from today, was that deaf communities
were more explicitly engaged in engaging with music in their own terms, but,even so, the dream of transmitting musical happiness continued to proliferate in
one form or another.
Editor's Note
An article by Frank Mondelli reflecting further development of this research has
been accepted for publication in the journal Technology and Culture under the title“Beautiful Sounds, Beautiful Life: Hearing Aids and Music in 1950s Japan.”
じんるい けんBookle t vol. 850