Leisure & the Smart Set
Shiseido Graph (monthly), 1933–1937

In 1933, Shiseido reinvented their monthly publication under the title Shiseido Graph. This offered its female audience a very different editorial design than its predecessor, Shiseido Geppō—a look that was clearly indebted to international modernist design innovations. In addition to its strikingly avant-garde aesthetic, Shiseido Graph promoted a dramatic image of rich, worldly, and highly independent women. Between 1933 and 1937, as this run of covers reveals, these real or imagined privileged daughters of the “smart set” were depicted engaged in a variety of leisure activities, not only collecting Western-style dolls and celebrating Christmas, but also bicycling, motoring, gathering at the beach, riding in speed boats, piloting airplanes, doing photography, hunting, fishing, skiing, and playing tennis and golf. They were, in a word, indistinguishable from their upper-crust counterparts in Europe and America, and purveyed a highly desirable modern lifestyle that, while well beyond the reach of the average Japanese consumer, clearly catered to urban cosmopolitan fantasies.