Marketing Beauty in the Mid-1930s
Ads & Posters, 1933–1936

Shiseido’s sophisticated advertising campaigns continued well into the 1930s undeterred by the gradually shifting political realities of the rise in militarism during the decade. The company employed skilled teams of graphic designers trained in the most up-to-date modernist techniques of the international avant-garde in Europe and America. The work of Shiseido’s innovative design division displays the ground-breaking synthesis of modernist aesthetics and corporate marketing to construct a chic ideal of feminine beauty and a highly appealing image of modern domesticity. Shiseido’s visual production offers an invaluable window into the cultural complexity of 1930s Japan.