MIT Visualizing Cultures


Selling Shiseido – Lesson 02

Women Go to War
By Lynn Parisi


Handout 02-A | Printer-friendly PDF file

You have been assigned to look at either images of women and children, or images of the battlefront in the Visualizing Cultures unit Selling Shiseido II: Visual Narrative, “Commercial Advertising & the War: Chain Store & Hanatsubaki, 1936–1941.”

Answer the questions below for each magazine cover.


1. Who or what is pictured?

2. Who or what is pictured in the foreground? Who or what is in the background?

3. Describe the people pictured in your own words. Note their posture or stance, their expression. Where is their attention directed?

4. What emotions or thoughts would you attribute to the people in the image?

5. What emotions or reactions does the image elicit from the viewer—that is, a woman on the home front during the war?

6. What is the image saying about women, about war, about Japan?











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