Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

L’affiche publicitaire et le gurafikku dezain au Japon (1854-1960)

1993; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3406/hista.1993.2581

2802-3285

Anne Gossot,

Cultural Identity and Heritage

Advertising posters and gurafikku dezain in Japan, 1854-1960. The world of commercial advertising was already well organised in Japan by the middle of the nineteenth century. The printed commercial forms most frequently to be found are bills for plays and other spectacles, advertising posters and tracts. They have the same format and use the same techniques and colours as the xylographic print (nishiki e). At the same time authors and publishers of prints began to engage in commercial publicity, destined for a bourgeois public rather than a popular one. Such commercial prints lasted longer than the traditional nishiki e prints, surviving up to about 1910. Lithography was introduced to Japan only in 1872, chromolithography and offset printing becoming more widespread from 1914. The Americans played a vital role in the introduction of these new techniques. The author of the present article looks at the parallel development of other advertising forms, with the rapid growth of the newspaper press from 1870 and the appearance of advertising agencies in Tokyo and Osaka. The products concerned were generally of western origin, and the styles of the advertising images tended to follow western graphic styles. Techniques of lithographic printing, called « applied drawing », were taught at the Tokyo Fine Arts school from 1896. From the 1920s, the poster gave rise to several aesthetic and social debates in Japan, whilst techniques improved thanks to the introduction of the HB process (colour photo-engraving). The author goes on to examine the principal events which mark the history of « artists’ posters » from 1925. In 1926 the activity was sufficiently professionalised for an association of commercial artists to be formed. The inspiration was still primarily of western origin and commercial artists tried to find ways of giving their creations the same status as traditional, fine art works. The expressions « design » and « graphic design » began to appear in Japan during the 1950s.