Gennifer Weisenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University, dives into the evolution of Japanese advertising design. She discusses how this commercial art shaped national identity and ideologies from the early 1900s to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Weisenfeld reveals the interplay between fine art and advertising, and how brands like Morinaga navigated cultural narratives. The compelling analysis connects advertising design to Japan's broader historical context, illustrating its role in both nation-building and consumer capitalism.
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insights INSIGHT
Modern Art Meets Corporate Advertising
Japanese modern commercial art evolved through avant-garde artists transitioning into corporate advertising design.
This fusion shaped Japan's visual culture and connected fine art to corporate branding and nation-building.
insights INSIGHT
Multimodal Advertising and Tech
Advertising in Japan was multimodal, including trademarks, packaging, signage, and electric publicity.
New technologies like electricity reshaped public visual culture and urban landscapes.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Hands-On Corporate Brand Founders
Company presidents in early 20th century Japan were hands-on in designing advertising campaigns.
Corporate archives revealed a vast, innovative network shaping brand histories and national culture.
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Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan
Gennifer Weisenfeld
Gas Mask Nation
Gas Mask Nation
Visualizing Civil Air Defense in Wartime Japan
Gennifer Weisenfeld
Gennifer Weisenfeld's "Gas Mask Nation" offers a nuanced look at Japan's civil air defense during World War II. It challenges conventional narratives by exploring the coexistence of anxiety and pleasure within the visual culture of the time. The book analyzes a wide range of visual materials, revealing how the Japanese population was mobilized through orchestrated drills and propaganda. Weisenfeld's work highlights the multisensory nature of this experience, demonstrating how fear and fascination intertwined. The book ultimately contributes to a broader understanding of wartime experiences beyond simple narratives of privation and suppression.
Commercial art is more than just mass-produced publicity; it constructs social and political ideologies that impact the public’s everyday life. In The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan(Duke University Press, 2025), Gennifer Weisenfeld examines the evolution of Japanese advertising graphic design from the early 1900s through the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a pivotal design event that rebranded Japan on the world stage. Through richly illustrated case studies, Weisenfeld tells the story of how modern corporations and consumer capitalism transformed Japan’s visual culture and artistic production across the pre- and postwar periods, revealing how commercial art helped constitute the ideological formations of nation- and empire-building. Weisenfeld also demonstrates, how under the militarist regime of imperial Japan, national politics were effectively commodified and marketed through the same mechanisms of mass culture that were used to promote consumer goods. Using a multilayered analysis of the rhetorical intentions of design projects and the context of their production, implementation, and consumption, Weisenfeld offers an interdisciplinary framework that illuminates the importance of Japanese advertising design within twentieth-century global visual culture.
Gennifer Weisenfeld is Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University.
Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.
New Books in East Asian Studies 