Design as Cultural Representation: Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan

Abstract

Design as Cultural Representation:Visuality and Materiality in Postwar Japan Yasutaka Tsuji (bio) Translated by Álex Bueno Following on the "Bibliography of Design and Society in Modern Japan" compiled for the "Design and Society in Modern Japan" issue of the Review of Japanese Culture and Society (RJCS) (2016),1 this issue engages design studies as an investigation of visual and material culture with an anthology of Japanese- and English-language discourse on the subject. In doing so, we hope to reveal how design emerged and developed as a representation of popular culture during the Cold War period. The World Design Conference held in 1960 in Tokyo was deemed revolutionary, and "design" came to be understood in Japan as a singular, distinct field. Yet, design also came to be used narrowly as a word representing technologies related to mass production and the functionalism underpinning it.2 It is questionable, therefore, whether design can be viewed as an individual field that is independent from painting, sculpture, architecture, photography and film, or music and literature, and whether its history can be narrated as such. Here, we offer a history of post-World War II design as visual and material culture by briefly revisiting earlier discourses. With this in mind, we draw attention to the texts we have selected as examples of how various individuals came to define the word "design" in the hope that we might establish a foundation for readers and future researchers. Followers of the Modern Movements Today, in 2020, it can only be said in hindsight that the historiography of design was developed—that is, in English-speaking countries—beginning in the fourth quarter of the twentieth century. Of course, it goes without saying that there were those who labeled themselves as designers and publicized their works, as well as critics and journalists who engaged with these works. However, it appears from today's perspective that it took some time for scholars to come together, to reflect on what is related to "design" and to compose their analyses academically. Continuously developing social classes [End Page 1] and international movements and changes in university curricula formed the impetus for such academic work. Therefore, to look at how design historiography developed in the latter half of the twentieth century, it is necessary to start with examining the political and economic background of this time period. The cases discussed below are a selection of relevant examples. The various texts on the subject by Sigfried Giedion, Lewis Mumford, Herbert Read, and Nicolaus Pevsner are indubitably worth mentioning as they have captured the long process of modernization that the authors experienced first-hand. Additionally, Philip Johnson, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., and Arthur Drexler curated exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and their efforts most certainly mark significant points in the history of design; the museum came to position design as part of the historical development of modern art, using the word "design" to name a curatorial department. In 1952, following these developments, Reyner Banham took an anthropological approach to the study of mass and popular culture as a member of the Independent Group, presenting his findings at Whitechapel Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.3 He published his doctoral thesis in 1960, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, which he developed under Nicolaus Pevsner at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In this text, Banham focused on early twentieth-century movements that had not been sufficiently examined until then, such as futurism. In delineating what constituted good and bad design according to standards of functionalism, he aimed to reconsider Pevsner's aesthetic criteria and Enlightenment perspective on mass culture. Through his experience in the Independent Group, Banham avoided understanding concepts merely as polar opposites, such as art of the elites and culture of the masses, avant-garde and Kitsch, or good and bad,4 and attempted to establish aesthetic criteria separate from these dichotomies.5 His writings attempted a comprehensive popular historiography of the painting, sculpture, architecture, and crafts of the early twentieth century. Two later studies from 1979 show that fitting "design" within the framework of the established academic field of the history of art and architecture was still...