�@ Greeting Thank you very much for visiting "Mandolin Melodies Museum" webpage. The precursors of the mandolins were made thousands years ago. It was a man named Calastro Parochia in Padua who created the basic style of today's mandolins in about 1620. It was about 1850 when Pasquale Vinaccia in Naples made the mandolin in today's style. The first mandolin came to Japan in 1894. We had its 100th anniversary in 1994. Mandolins have flourished, and been popular among people, spotlighted as artisitic instruments. This was through the efforts of Maestro Jiro Nakano,both a benefactor to the mandolin world in Japan and my honored teacher, and of many other predecessors who loved mandolins. I opened "Mandolin Melodies Museum" to share their work and collections with you. I hope you will visit both these webpages as well as "Mandolin Melodies Museum", and enjoy the world of mandolins. Thank you. Director: Hirokazu Nanya �@