Publicity and Propaganda in 1930s Japan: Modernism as Method

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Despite the apparent divide between modernism's sometimes recon dite aesthetic sensibilities and the more didactic needs of corporate advertising and political propaganda, the modernist artistic move ment was integral to the early development of modern Japanese promotional design, particularly in the sphere of photography As major Japanese corporations emerged in the 1920s, it was clear that they were not just product manufacturers, but arbiters of taste who often worked in tandem with the state in directing consumer life and consumption habits through compelling visual strategies. In the 1930s, when daily life rationalization trends melded into increasingly broad-based social mobilization, these same modernist pictorial strat egies began to be deployed concurrently in the dynamic realms of national publicity and propaganda (kokka senden or kokusaku senden) production, in both the graphic arts and exhibition display design. Through a close examination of the artistic production of some of the foremost commercial artists and photographers of the period, I will explore how the designers' integrative techniques exploited the affectivity of modernist manipulation of the image, effectively blur ring the line between publicity and propaganda through the 1930s and beyond. The burgeoning field of commercial design was profoundly influential in the transformation of Japanese social and cultural practices in the prewar period because the construction of recogniz able brand name products helped manufacturers forge a national consumer market by the late 1930s. Print advertisements for a range of newly emerging national Japanese corporations?Morinaga Confectionary Company, Matsushita Electric, and Ka? Soap among others?reveal the extensive use of modernist imagery to promote consumer products.2 Modernist styles were popular among advertis ing executives and designers precisely because of their close asso ciations with the modern, the new, the scientific, and the machine aesthetic. Not coincidentally the companies who employed modern ist aesthetics were largely (although not exclusively) companies marketing new types of modern consumer products like Western 1 (Arles: Editions Philippe Picquier, 2007), 47-70.