Posters circulated in Japan simultaneously with the country’s swift reconstruction and economic revival after the Second World War. If the first generation of poster designers was mostly guided by western modernism, searching for a universal and functional way of communication, the following generations from the 1970s onwards increasingly drew on their own pictorial tradition and maintained marked individual approaches. This was not least a reaction to the west’s fascination with a poster culture with very different parameters and arguments. Until today, the Japanese poster functions most notably as a highly aesthetic image advertisement and indoor medium, presupposing the conception of the designer as an artist.

The 137 posters profiled in this book reflect a broad range of influences and approaches to the form, showcasing various art and lettering styles as well as abstract compositions.

An excellent short introduction to Japanese poster art, this volume is the twenty-sixth publication in the Zurich Museum of Design Poster Collection series. 

Edited by Bettina Richter, with an essay (“Topos of the 20th-Century Japanese Poster: The Surface of Ambivalence”) by Kiyonori Muroga, editor-in-chief of IDEA Magazine.

Designed by Integral Lars Müller

Published by Lars Müller Publishers

Softcover, 112 pages, full color, 6.5 × 9.5 inches

ISBN: 978-3-03778-422-8