Taisho Modern

japan 1919

Mitsukoshi Department store poster in 1925 designed by Sugiura Hisui

いとし鈴蘭 (My Beloved Lily of the Valley) by Takabatake Kasho, year unknown.

Hashiguchi Goyô (Japanese, 1881–1921)Japanese, Taishô era1920 (Taishô 9), October Woodblock print; ink and color on paper Museum purchase with funds donated by Mrs. Charles Gaston Smith’s Group

#オハナライズ

Today, on June 25th, 1924, Yumeji Takehisa’s poetry-based Senoh sheet music “Matsubara” is published. A woman leaning against a pine tree decorated the cover. Yumeji draws a lot of women leaning against trees and walls. The leaning and leaning on something seems to symbolize the circumstances of women who lived in the Taisho era. [Text by Yayoi Museum and Yumeji Takehisa Museum]

Hibiya Park in Tokyo, Japan: a pair of Geisha wearing kimonos in a car. ca. 1912

The artist came to Japan in 1911 but couldn't return home due to the First World War. So instead, he studied woodblock printing and ukiyo-e. The artist's signature is particularly clever, don't you think?

In 1910, The Mitsukoshi Department Store hired the capable artist Sugiura Hisui to be chief art advertising designer. This 1914 poster by Hisui shows both the influence of a dying Art Nouveau, but a striking foreshadowing of the Art Deco period to come. 

Used kimono store, about 1920s, Japan. Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Japanese Postcards. MFA

２． 1926年 日本 東京 ある通り ©Musée Albert-Kahn - département des Hauts-de-Seine.

TSUNETOMI KITANO “THREAD OF WISHES” (1924)

Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Japanese Postcards

竹久夢二《花ひらく》