Tokyo Symphony Conductor Here on Guest-Artist Tour

[Photo caption]: BASIL CAMERON and VISCOUNT HIDEMARO KONOYE. Two great symphony conductors chat

The sound of western music is comparatively new in Japan, but the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, during the past eleven years, has become famous as a great musical organization. Part of this is reflected in the fact that during that time it has been conducted by a slim, black-haired member of the nobility -- Viscount Hidemaro Konoye.

Viscount Konoye, a globe-trotter as well as a musician and a member of Japan's House of Peers, was in Seattle yesterday, bound for a season of guest-conducting, a task he welcomes because it gives him a chance to study, at first hand, the great musical combinations of the world. He arrived aboard the steamship Hiye Maru, and left yesterday evening for the East.

The famous Japanese conductor, whose brother, Prince Konoye, is president of the House of Peers, and who distantly is related to the Emperor himself, looks like neither the popular conception of a musician nor a member of the nobility. Soft-spoken and unassuming, he wears business suits and horn-rimmed glasses.

Entertained yesterday at the Olympic Hotel, at a luncheon sponsored by the Japanese Society of America, and by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the spoke, but briefly, and used German, a language with which he is more familiar than English. Chatting with Basil Cameron, Seattle conductor, he said he regretted that he could not stay to hear Josef Szigeti, famous violinist, play here with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

Viscount Konoye was educated at the University of Tokyo and has studied music in England, Italy, France and Germany. He will conduct European and American orchestras on his present tour.