Hikifuda, or What Japanese Advertising Looked Like at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries (Collection from the Russian State Art Library)

Abstract

Hikifuda are woodcut or lithograph prints that retailers and wholesalers, mercantile agencies, and other organizations in Japan of the Meiji era (1868–1912) used as advertising materials. The Meiji era was the period of great Japanese transformation from a medieval country into a modern power which was treated by European countries as equal. As a result, the new type of advertisement helped in spreading western ideas and lifestyles among the residents. Besides, the low price and mass production of the leaflets is another reason for their high popularity along with in whole Japan. The hikifuda handbills gave start to a new stage in the Japanese advertising industry and developed means of communication, connected Japanese traditional art with European modern trade tendencies. They have a great variety of subjects, which contain deep symbols and signs related to Japanese history and culture: traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e engravings: Women in kimono, children, the Seven Gods of Fortune Ebisu, Daikokuten, Benzaiten and others, dragons and mount Fuji and other various symbols. Besides traditional Japanese symbols, telephones, telegraph poles, mailboxes, European clothing stores, and even tobacco shops were depicted as signs of the influence of the Western lifestyle on the Japanese economy, politics, culture, and everyday life. The research is based on materials from the collection of the RSAL Iconography Department that hosts various samples of hikifuda advertising leaflets. Presumably, they were produced in the early 20th century by the Osaka printing workshop. Japanese advertising leaflets in the Russian State Art Library (RSAL) collection represent an interesting, but still poorly researched layer of urban art in Japan at the turn of the 19th—20th century.