A New Book Looks Back at Creative Advertising in Japan

The contrast provided a liberating effect, playing to both the flapper and the "red". Genders began to blur: modern girls were wearing short hair and modern boys were effeminate in manner. A commercially savvy public became familiar with the social and economic issues from both Europe and the United States. Because this global modernization was being viewed through the prism of Japanese society at the time, a truly unique cultural transformation occurred.

Nowhere is this more distinctly visible than in the infinitesimal advertisements on matchboxes from the period. In a changing leisure market, matches joined cigarettes in Western style hotels and coffeehouses, as well as sushi bars next door. Patrons might be found in modern Western dress or traditional Japanese clothing.

Matchibako, a new book on the art of Japanese matchboxes written by Maggie Kinser Hohle, reflects how these two cultures were converging and diverging at once. Anonymously designed, these tiny remainders of the period show the influences of both Cubism and the Bauhaus in both illustration and English type, while retaining conventional woodblock fonts and often right-to-left Japanese text.

Interestingly, most of the products advertised have nothing to do with smoking or using matches, but instead everyday items and services that were traded in the modern world, including: socks, cosmetics, bread, movies, theater, cafeterias, taxis and barbers.

Beautifully illustrated, Matchibako showcases 42 of some of the most interesting samples the author came across in a recent trip to Japan, from a collection held by Japanese designer Naomichi Kawahata.