Marketing Beauty in a Time of War
Ads & Posters, 1937–1941

Japan launched its war of aggression against China in July 1937, which marked the full eruption of the Asia-Pacific war, a more extended conflict than World War II or the War in the Pacific. Japan’s militarist leaders directed a concerted campaign against “luxury” and Westernized ideals of beauty of the sort promoted by Shiseido. By 1940, this governmental pressure began to have a marked impact on the company’s promotional imagery, transforming their highly Westernized female subjects into more realistic and conspicuously Asian models. A few years later, commercial advertising itself was deemed an unacceptable luxury and disappeared almost completely. In 1942 and 1943, female images disappeared and Shiseido marketing was largely relegated to small product advertisements; even these promotions disappeared almost entirely thereafter.