Long Living Tortoise's Walk in Tokyo
"Experiencing the designs of the 1930s in 2001"
Yoshie Iimori
August 27, 2001
My friend was going to hold an event on "Showa 7 (1932) and Ueno," two seemingly unrelated terms. Since I'm helping out just a bit with the preparations I was keeping an eye out on things related to it. It was the time when, although people were apparently enjoying the free life in town, they were actually all mobilizing to prepare for war. My friend says that the more he knows about it, the more he finds it interesting. Then he says that each of the experts in theater, history, and French literature is going to write a paper on what they have researched based on their own interests. So I'm quite sure that I'll enjoy it even by sitting aside and listening to discussions. As a person devoted to walking, I plan to establish walking courses to learn about an area by listening to others.
But I still thought that it would not be very exciting only to be listening, and I was looking for some information that I can bring to the meeting, and found an event exhibition called "The printing designs of the 1930s in Japan" being held at the Tokyo National Museum Film Center in Kyobashi. The printing designs are related to such things as advertisements, posters, and handbills that truly reflect the social conditions. I was pretty sure that I'd be able to find something here.
Walking into the exhibition room, all the scenes with posters being put up on the wall came to my mind. It could be at the front of a theater, on the hallway of an office, or.... Most of them were made for propaganda use, and the strong assertion expressed by the lettering and slogans were designed to reach the viewers directly. Looking at those posters with interfering slogans such as "Be clean rather than putting on make-up" and "Working brightly leads to a bright life," I could see that the country was meddling in an individual's life, and it makes me feel quite disgusted or makes me mutter that there is no profitable thing about the posters inviting you to emmigrate to Brazil to have a dream life there. I felt once again that a photograph magazine created in a geometrical structure of the Bauhaus style looks very attractive. I like the decorative designs of the 1920s, but the new graphics of the 1930s are sensational.
I noticed that I was not doing much beyond developing impressions while looking at the posters. I was convinced, "Well, I won't be able to be a scholar," and got out of the exhibition site aiming to carry out my lowbrow walking style. I could take the Ginza line and go to Ueno straight from there, but I felt that it'd be more pleasant to be walking about Ginza light-heartedly. I wish that the world, where city dwellers live peacefully, stays as it is forever! Praying not to have the condition of the 1930s once again that leads to the war, I fixed my eyes on the designs of the brilliant bustling street.
Translated by Maiko Noda
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