Description: There is no Japanese company whose advertising design better represents the aesthetic of cosmopolitan chic seen throughout the visual sphere in the early twentieth-century than Shiseido. The Shiseido cosmetics company opened its western-style pharmaceutical business in the Ginza in Tokyo in 1872 and a few decades later, under the banner of its stylish camellia logo and signature designs, emerged as one of the leading cosmetics manufacturers in Japan, a position it still holds over a century later. This presentation will explore how the company creatively produced and conveyed meaning through the visual and material aspects of its marketing strategy in the prewar period. Weisenfeld contends that Shiseido’s commercial success was due to the company’s uncanny ability to merge images of a transhistorical, cosmopolitan, largely deracinated fantasy lifestyle with rationalized notions of the scientification of beauty.

Gennifer Weisenfeld: received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in Japanese Art History. Her field of research is modern and contemporary Japanese art history, design, and visual culture. Her work explores the impact of Japan’s modern sociopolitical transformations on artistic production and practice; the cultural formations of nation and empire building; Japanese modernism; the politics of the avant-garde; the visual culture of disaster; commercial design; and the relationship between high art and popular culture.

Sponsored by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, the Department of Art History, the Master of Arts in Language, Literature, and Translation, and the Center for International Education. Made possible through a grant from the Association of Asian Studies Northeast Asia Council Distinguished Speakers Bureau.