Roughly 1200 items of digitized audio from roughly 600 78rpm Kabuki records in the collection of Onishi Hidenori have been made available to listen to online.

It goes without saying that these 78rpm "standard playing" (SP) records, capturing the unamplified natural voices of Kabuki actors of the late 19^th to early 20^th centuries, are extremely valuable resources for Kabuki research. However, institutions which hold such records in their collections are limited, and since particular equipment is required for playing the records, up until now they have not been widely accessible.

Roughly 650 such Kabuki SP records have been identified as having been produced between 1907 and 1955. Of those, roughly 85% are included in this digitized collection and are made available to be listened to at any time online.

The Onishi Record Collection database is available here:
https://www.dh-jac.net/db2/video/search_onishi.php

Please click the "Art Tube" button next to items in the search results to listen to the audio.　

One can also listen to these recordings in the ARC Audio-Video Portal Database:
https://www.dh-jac.net/db2/video/search_portal.php?lang=en

Among archives of vinyl records, the National Diet Library's Historical Recordings Collection (Rekion) is well-known. Currently, roughly 110 Kabuki records are available in that database to the general public. The added publication of the Onishi Record Collection dramatically expands the number of recordings available.

This online archive also includes features unavailable in others.

Jackets, envelopes, lyrics listings, and other associated materials can also be viewed. Further, images of the entire surface of the record, not only of the label, are viewable, so one can see the condition of the record itself. The database also includes links to banzuke cast listings and other materials, so one can enjoy a multi-dimensional listening experience.