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THE JAPANESE CONTRIBUTION TO GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY

Firstly, it’s important to understand that graphic design in Asia is practiced from a commercial perspective. Culturally, graphic design does not have the greater sense of being ‘important’ to society that it has in the Western First World. Due to this, design salaries in Japan are a lot less substantial compared - the average pay for a Graphic Designer in Tokyo is ¥2,473,008 per year. (PayScale, July 2018) However, has Japanese graphic design always been undervalued in such a manner, or simply underrepresented in design history? How have the Japanese contributed to graphic design as we know it today?

Frazer, J (1996) suggested that whilst adhering to its own distinctive artistic traditions, Japanese graphic design was nevertheless influenced by Western styles, trends and fashions - the most influential being art moderne, or art deco. This was due to the the Iwakura Tomomi Mission of 1871 which had a huge impact on the arts in Japan. A group of government officials traveled all over the US and Europe and they brought back over 500 foreigners to assist in the ‘westernisation’, many of them taught arts and crafts subjects at Tokyo University. The overall aim was to cater towards the western ideals/market at the time. F. Marinetti (1909) published The Futurist Manifesto in Paris but within the same year, it was translated in Japanese. This suggests that European Constructivism and Western design had an influence on Japanese design however, they combined it with traditional Japanese art theory. For example, the Japanese tradition of family crests (Known as Kamon) inspired many Japanese designers’ approach to trademark design. Mitsubishi’s logo is suggestive of the three-leaf crest of the Tosa Clan, Yataro's first employer, and also of the three stacked rhombuses of the Iwasaki family crest. (Mitsuibishi Electric, no date)

Modernism in Japanese commercial design flourished between World War I and II. Communication design became increasingly popular in this era and was accepted by the general public.  From the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, Japan was a rapidly growing industrial state with a growing consumer culture that relied increasingly on commercial art to promote and sell its products. The evolution of graphic design as a  discipline was deeply rooted in Japan's industrialisation and the growth of the modern city, and the urban consumer's needs for advertisements. (Guilty Novin Blogspot, no date)

In the little documentation of Japanese design history, it is often more than not addressing how the West impacted their design, but does not look at the Japanese designers who influenced the West. Gihachiro Okayama was a prolific visual artist who did not have one set style. He began his career in the late 1920’s designing woodblock prints for commercial purposes. Although block printing originated in China, the method was widely used throughout the entirety of Asia. From 1923 to 1933, he studied with Ishii Kendo, learning about the traditions of Japanese printmaking and ukiyo-e. His work included posters and advertisements for the Japan Wool Company and Nikka Whiskey, as seen on the left. The approach appears to be child like, with a caricature and hand-drawn typography but it was instantly recognisable as it stood out considerably from other poster designs at the time. In 1931, Okuyama founded the Tokyo Advertisement Art Association.

Around the same period, Yusaku Kamekura was also a highly relevant designer  and he was known to have paved the way for Japanese graphic design.  He was a previous student of the Institute of New Architecture and Industrial Arts - a private institute established and run by Renshichiro Kawakita with the aim of introducing Bauhaus design theories in Japan.  He then started his design career at the publishing company Nippon Kaupapu. Two years after his first one-man show, he organised the Graphic '55 exhibition at the Takashimaya department store, introducing design into the vocabulary of the populace. Five years later he helped gather Japan’s aspiring graphic designers into the Japan Advertising Artists Club. Less than a decade later he hosted the World Design Conference. Following this event, he co-founded the successful Nippon Design Centre, pairing corporations  and designers in a unique and uniquely progressive and productive organisation. In 1978 he was a founding member in the Japan Graphic Designers Association.

Kamekura was known for combining the influences of the Bauhaus with his traditional heritage (Design Is History, no date). The Bauhaus, Constructivism, the Art Deco posters of A.M. Cassandre -- all exerted a profound influence over Kamekura (Yusaku Kamekura Blogspot, February 2006). His poster proposals for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics won several national and international design awards is a perfect example of that. The Olympics represented more than just athletes and gold medals, for the first time ever since their WWII defeat, the world was looking at Japan - the Land of the Rising Sun.  As seen on the right, the posters were simple but with these minimalist designs, Kamekura instigated Japan into the post-war design elite. After his death in 1997, Japan Graphic Designers Association (JAGDA) honoured Kamekura in 1999 with a design award in his name, recognising him as a key leader of the association.

Alongside Kamekura, Yokoo Tadanori’s work is also considered to have shaped Japanese graphic design. Traversing the world between art and design, Tadanori Yokoo's work has a very personal nature and often reflects his own interests. (Design Is History, no date) He has embraced an enormous variety of media from book design, swatch watches to painting.

His works alludes to an eccentric array of movements including but not limited to, Surrealism, Dada, Russian Constructivism, American Pop Art, contemporary Japanese popular culture and traditional Japanese art forms. He was considered to be apart of the 1960s pop culture and often unfairly described as the “Japanese Andy Warhol”  but Yokoo's complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original. However, popular critics at the time were largely undermining of Japanese Pop Art, and considered many Japanese designers to be imitating work of the West. The large difference being that in the West, printed works are produced for artistic contemplation or fictional purposes, rarely both. Yokoo is considered to belong in the unclear overlap between art and design. As the art critic  Yasushi Kurabayashi (Design Observer, no date) wrote, “Yokoo’s posters are not designed around conventional poster-like ideas. Rather his posters have been executed from his own desire for creative expression, with little regard for cognitive clarity or message.” His style is about his own desires, visions, fears and spirituality. He works for himself; the client is only secondary.

Designer Shigeo Fukuda was known for his bare poster designs with logo-like simplicity. He experimented with perspective, negative space and the visual and geometric cohesion between elements on the poster.   His trademark style using a limited colour palette developed from an early interest in Swiss graphic design and influence of the West. Unlike other Japanese designers at the time, he like things to be minimalistic.

Much of his work was designed to make a social impact rather than a commercial one and he was a strong advocate for pacifism and environmentalism. Shigeo once told Idea Magazine that ‘I believe that in design, 30 percent dignity, 20 percent beauty and 50 percent absurdity are necessary’ (Design Is History, no date) . His most famous design was the satirical poster, “Victory 1945,” showing an airborne black artillery shell aimed directly at the opening of the cannon barrel from which it was shot. He was the first Japanese designer to be inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.

One thing to note, when looking through the scarce Japanese graphic design history, like the West, it was still largely dominated by men. Eiko Ishioka was however, a revolutionary female Japanese graphic designer. She continued to pursue her career although her father (also a graphic designer) warned that she would struggle in a male-dominated culture. (The Telepraph, 2017) Ignoring the advice, she began working with the cosmetics company Shiseido. Her work became noticed however when working for the Japanese department store Parco. She became famous for adverts that seemingly had little relation to the company. Her most famous, a 90-second advert, featured the actress Faye Dunaway wearing black and eating a hard-boiled egg while staring at the camera. The letters P-A-R-C-O then played across the screen at the end. The advert is seemingly trying to say “I even look fabulous eating a hard boiled egg whilst wearing Parco”.  Ishioka then branched out into costume design and art direction, one of her most memorable contributions was being directer of costume design for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

In conclusion, Japanese design history is available but unfortunately it’s scarce. UAL library search for example came up with just a handful of books in total especially compared to the Western counterparts. Their influence and importance was largely ignored or unrecognised partially due to the fact that at the time, they didn’t recognise their design work to be of much importance commercially compared to the Western world but also because of the ignorance in the industry itself which only valued the typical work from a western male ignoring both other ethnicities and sex. Unlike female designers, the Japanese haven’t had a movement behind them to advocate for their importance and equality within the industry.  However, that’s not to say it isn’t changing as in contemporary society we are fortunately beginning to celebrate and appreciate diverse cultures and giving credit for our influences wherever it’s due.

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