The Relationship between
Art and Advertising in
Edo-period Japan

 

The Echigoya in Surugacho by Utagawa Kunisada, 1830, woodblock print triptych, Collection of Ad Museum Tokyo

Many of the 55 artists whose work is featured in the JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles exhibition WAVE: New Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts work in advertising, using their artistic skills in collaboration with a diverse range of companies and brands. In this webinar, Ms. Miko Tsuruga Tucker, Curator of the Ad Museum Tokyo, shows that this trend is not new in Japan, but in fact flourished during the Edo period (1603-1868) in Japan, when, according to business management visionary, Peter Drucker, marketing was invented in Japan.

During this period, many Japanese shops and other businesses hired artists like Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kunisada to create designs to help promote their products and services, as well as working with actors and other performing artists to sponsor their products. Ms. Tsuruga explores the many ways that companies worked with artists to market their wares to a very enthusiastic audience, and how some of these approaches to advertising changed after 1868, when Japan opened its borders to Western influence.

Ms. Tsuruga illustrates her talk with images from the collection of the Ad Museum Tokyo, a museum that aims to deepen the public’s understanding of the social and cultural value of advertising. It was founded in 2002 to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Hideo Yoshida in 1902, the fourth president of Dentsu Inc., a company that was established in the Meiji period (1868-1912).

*To watch the video in full screen, please click on the image above, then click on the YouTube icon on the lower right-hand corner. 

Speaker Profile

Miko Tsuruga Tucker
Curator and PR Manager, Ad Museum Tokyo
From 2003 to 2015, Miko Tsuruga Tucker worked for advertising and marketing companies and was primarily in charge of marketing for major car companies in China. In 2015, she joined Ad Museum Tokyo, where she has worked as a Curator and PR Manager.

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At Ad Museum Tokyo, she planned the exhibitions Good Ideas for Good (introducing visitors to social issues that are unfamiliar in Japan and showed how advertising contributes to informing society about them) and World-Class Creatives Here and Now (exploring new trends in global advertising communication) and their related events. She also compiled the catalog of the Ad Museum Tokyo collection.
Recently, Tsuruga Tucker has been focused on activities as an educator, giving lectures and courses at universities relating to advertising communication, as well as sharing the fun aspects and the social and cultural value of advertising communication to people of all generations.