"English music in its most primitive form was essentially group music. The old divisions were church, secular and concert music. . . . The madrigal flourished best in the Tudor period. Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I composed madrigals."

This introduction was given in a talk on the origin and early development of English music. The occasion was the new year's meeting of the Tokyo Women's Club. The date was 1930. The speaker was Keiichi Kurosawa, who had just founded the Tokyo Madrigal Club.

Hiroshi Kurosawa, Keiichi's son, has an inexhaustible stock of family stories going back to Teijiro, his grandfather. Teijiro was the innovator and pioneer who produced the first Japanese typewriter and founded the Ginza firm Kurosawa and Co.