Promoting the Profession
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Published:March 2025
The construction of a new social status for design was not a coincidental development. Designers and design critics who sought aesthetic and social legitimacy for the profession consciously and aggressively forged it. Japanese design critics such as Hamada Masuji and Murota Kurazo were simultaneously entrepreneurs, pedagogues, and cultural arbiters, mapping out a discursive terrain for commercial art that solidified its professional and social position. This chapter explores the contribution of these design entrepreneurs and the mass-published trade journals and specialized design publications they pioneered—including design compendia—in disseminating information about innovative design to a burgeoning community of commercial designers and advertising professionals. It places the public articulation of commercial art in Japanese design magazines in a global comparative context.
Sources
Too numerous to include here, articles from daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals and newspapers have not been listed in the bibliography but are indicated in the endnotes of each chapter.
Aidea (Idea)
Affiches (Posters)
Art and Industry
Asahi gurafu (Asahi Graph)
Cheinstoa kenkyū (Chainstore Research)
Commerce Japan
Commercial Art
Desegno
Far Eastern Review
Front
Gebrauchsgraphik (Commercial graphics)
Graphis
Gurafikku dezain (Graphic Design)
Hanbai undo (Sales Movement)
Japan Times and Mail
Kaō buretin (Kao Bulletin)
Kenchiku shinchō (New architecture)
Kōga
Kōgei jidai (Industrial Art News)
Kōkoku bijutsu (Japan Advertising Art)
Kōkokukai (Advertising World)
Kōkū asahi (Aviation Asahi)
Kokusai kenchiku (International architecture)
Life
Matsuda shinpō (Mazda News)
Matsushita Denki geppō (Matsushita Electric Monthly)
Mavo
Mitsukoshi (Mitsukoshi taimusu) (Mitsukoshi Times)
Mizue (Watercolor painting)
Modern Publicity
Morinaga berutorain (Morinaga Beltline)
Nagaseman (Nagase man)
New York Times
Nippon
Offset- Buch- und Werbekunst (Offset, book, and advertising)
Ōsaka asahi shinbun
Ōsaka mainichi shinbun
Sandē mainichi (Sunday Mainichi)
Shiseidō cheinstoa (Shiseido Chainstore)
Shiseido cheinstoa alma mater (Shiseido Chainstore Alma Mater)
Shiseido geppō (Shiseido Monthly)
Shiseido gurafu (Shiseido Graph)
Suītorando (Sweetland)
Tōkyō asahi shinbun
Tsūrisuto (Tourist)
Travel in Japan
Umi to sora (Sea and Sky)
Yomiuri shinbun