Images of the Month: February 2010

A collection of images posted to Twitter during the past month. Follow us @showaok.


Japanese Capri-Sun (Capri-Sonne) ad, c. 1980


Shigeo Fukuda - Victory 1945, 1971


Kazumasa Nagai - Sapporo '72, 1971


Japanese ice skater Tomō Kurosawa during a rehearsal for the 1972 Sapporo Olympics


Entrance to the 23rd Snow Festival during the Sapporo Olympics


Another shot of the Sapporo Snow Festival during the 1972 Winter Olympics


Kazumasa Nagai - Poster for Asahi Stiny beer, 1965

We're Moving To Japan!

Well, it's official; this is the big news we've been waiting for...

The Showa OK! team is moving to Japan! As of the summer we will have relocated to the Tokyo area, with our San Francisco "offices" still in tact. But what better a place to explore Shōwa-era ephemera than that bustling metropolitan sprawl which lies home to the imperial palace?

And as an added bonus we plan to offer special limited coverage from Kyūshū, southernmost of the four major islands in the Japanese archipelago, where contributor Kumaco will be stationed over the next few months.

Clearly big changes for the team here at Showa OK!, but we plan to face them with open hearts and open minds. Here's to riding the tiger in 2010!

That Night's Wife (1930)

Sono Yo No Tsuma (a.k.a. That Night's Wife) - Directed by Yasujirō Ozu
その夜の妻 (監督：小津安二郎)

This Friday, February 19th, the Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley will be presenting That Night's Wife, a rare work by filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu. The 1930 silent movie is part of the two-film miniseries Masters of Asian Cinema, showing alongside Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's "modern classic" A City of Sadness, which runs the following day. The screening of That Night's Wife features Judith Rosenberg on piano, who will provide live accompaniment to the film.

"One of seven films Ozu made in 1930, this seems at first to be a prime example of his 'atypical' early silent period, when he experimented with numerous Hollywood-influenced genres and techniques before gradually refining the minimalist style and thematic focus of his mature career. The film opens as an effective heist drama pastiche, with [male lead Tokihiko] Okada trussing up bank clerks and dodging the long shadows of a police dragnet, fox-like; we follow him home to his wife and their critically ill baby daughter, as does a wily police chief. As captor and prey sit out the night, waiting for the child's recovery, the scene is set for a claustrophobic battle of nerves." (NB, Time Out London)

The films are presented in conjunction with the conference Relocating Ozu: The Question of an Asian Cinematic Vernacular, organized by the Centers for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Studies at UC Berkeley. The conference aims to "bring together a dynamic group of international scholars to reassess Ozu’s work in its wider relation to inter- and postwar colonial and urban modernities in East Asia." For more information, visit the UC Berkeley Institute on East Asian Studies.

For more information on Masters of Asian Cinema: Yasujiro Ozu and Hou Hsiao-hsien, visit the Pacific Film Archive Theater.

Toi Et Moi - Niji To Yuki No Ballad (1971)

Toi Et Moi - Niji To Yuki No Ballad (1971)
トワ・エ・モア - 虹と雪のバラード

In light of the current festivities in Vancouver, we at Showa OK! have been swept away by the international wave of Olympic fever. And as the focus of our efforts here pertain to all things Shōwa, we were immediately nostalgic for sights and sounds from the Games of the 11th Winter Olympiad in Sapporo, Hokkaidō.

Japan was originally awarded rights to host the 1940 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, in addition to the Summer Games which were to be held in Tokyo earlier that year. However, the Games were ultimately cancelled when Japan resigned as host after the country's invasion of China in 1937. Following the war, cities which forfeited hosting the Games were again awarded the opportunity to do so, resulting in the 1964 Tokyo Games and, of course, the 1972 Winter Games. In both instances, Japan was the first Asian country to host either Olympic ceremonies.

Pop-folk duo Toi Et Moi's "Niji To Yuki No Ballad" ("Ballad of Rainbows and Snow"), released in 1971, was chosen as the official theme song of the Sapporo Olympics. While the song's title may sound corny (and, indeed, the song itself may sound corny as well), we feel it representative not only of popular music in Japan at the time, but also of the simple hope that countries once entrenched in aggression could join together to participate in friendly competition for the sake of international welfare.

Exhibition Posters (1928-41)

Yesterday, the off-kilter cultural archivists at Pink Tentacle presented us with a stunning array of Japanese exhibition posters taken from the book Nihon No Hakurankai (日本の博覧会), published in 2005. These illustrated graphic designs were created to promote various government-sponsored exhibitions (hakurankai) from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s. We'd like to share with you some of our favorites, as well as a little quick commentary.

From the celebration of the Shōwa emperor's coronation to the final image seen here, taken from 1941, the radical emotional and political shift in the country at the time is clearly conveyed through the artwork. Unsurprisingly, tanks and machine guns figure prominently in the latter designs, representing ideas of "national defense" and "Asia development". Ironically, 1937 marks the year of the Pan-Pacific Peace Exposition, a world's fair in Nagoya, in which both China and the U.S. were participating countries. During the months following the exhibition Japanese troops would eventually capture Shanghai and commit unspeakable atrocities in Nanking.

Notice how the text of these posters reads from right to left. This was typical of most printed material in Japanese from before and during the war.

Ikkō Tanaka (1930-2002)

Albeit somewhat tardily, it has to come to our knowledge that Ginza Graphic Gallery in Tokyo is currently holding an exhibition documenting the work of prolific designer Ikkō Tanaka (田中一光). Exactly 150 posters were selected for the show, highlighting the artist's output from 1953 to 1979. Incidentally, it was Tanaka's work with the Japan Graphic Designers Association that contributed to the establishment of the gallery over 20 years ago.



Tanaka was born in Nara City and educated at what is now Kyoto City University of Arts, the oldest arts college in Japan. He was an innovative and influential artist whose work helped define a sense of modernity in Shōwa-era graphic art. Beginning his career in advertising during the 50s, Tanaka established his own design studio in 1963. It was around the same time that he began to attract an international audience, holding his first solo exhibit overseas only two years later.



His work has been described as "strong, clean, and impactful", the volume of which is as diverse as it is simplistic. After producing designs for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, he became the creative director for Seibu Retailing Group (now the Saison Group) in 1975. There he oversaw a wide variety of work, including retail space and environmental design, product packaging and art direction for theaters and museums. Tanaka was later credited with developing the concept for Muji, the popular Japanese "no-brand" retail chain, and served as the company's first art director.

Distinguished amongst the graphic design community in both Japan and abroad, he was awarded numerous accolades and honors during his career including the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon, bestowed upon him by the Japanese government in 1994. Ikkō Tanaka passed away in 2002, just three days shy of his 72nd birthday.