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='''2012 Shashi Group Panel at AAS in Toronto'''=
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='''The Shiseido Culture: Design, Fashion and Marketing '''=
  
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Sponsored by Japanese Company Histories Interest Group (Shashi Group)<br>
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Sunday, March 24, 2013 10:15 am – 12:15 pm, Session# 357<br>
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Manchester Grand Hyatt / Madeline D<br>
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San Diego, CA<br>
  
''Researching Early Modern and Modern History of Japan with Shashi (Japanese Company Histories)''
 
  
Sponsored by Japanese Company Histories (Shashi) Interest Group
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Abstract of Panel:<br>
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Shiseido Cosmetics Company commemorated 140 years anniversary in 2012.  The company has built originality that is worthy of being called the Shiseido Culture with its excellent business sense and design and becomes world renowned brand.  The company has cultivated and re-edit and continually communicate the Shiseido Culture within and outside of the company and it makes contributions to society through design and marketing.  The company has also considers the Shiseido Culture and its history to be an important management asset and has published more than 60 titles of Shashi, or company history books, and publications related to design and advertisement since 1957.  For researchers who study art history, cultural history and business history, these publications are very important primary resources. This panel invites four researchers to discuss how the Shiseido Culture have had effects on history of design and advertisements in Japan, relationship between imperial Japan and women’s fashion, and Japanese marketing in colonies.  <br>
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<br>
  
Abstract:
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Chair: Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University<br>
There are more than 50,000 companies over 100 years old in Japan; 3,886 of them are over 200 years old. Among them is Kongodo, the world’s oldest company, established in 578 in Kyoto, Japan. Since the Meiji period, many Japanese companies have published shashi, or company histories. Shashi contain not only the company’s history, but also that of their industries.  They reflect changes in culture, conditions and social environment.  Shashi also present history going back to the medieval and early modern periods, since so many Japanese companies have experienced extraordinary longevity.
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<br>
This panel will examine approaches to using shashi as research resources. Charles Andrews raises questions about early modern origins of Japan's modern communications networks identified in a close reading of the company history of Nippon Express, a global transport and logistics corporation founded in the late Tokugawa period. Yuriko Kadokura looks into various shashi to find how Japanese companies, and Japanese society as a whole, dealt with difficulties following the Great Kanto Earthquake, how they chose their path to recovery, and how they recorded these actions to share with future generations.  Martha Chaiklin investigates how western footwear was adopted and produced in nineteenth century Japan by researching shashi, newspapers, magazines and literary sources. Bringing these three papers together as a panel provides an opportunity for critical discussion of the potential and limitations of shashi as resources for various kinds of academic research.
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Paper 1. Rebecca Nickerson, Ph.D., Independent Scholar<br>
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Designing Women: Miss Shiseido, Tanaka Chiyo, and the Making of Imperial Style in Japan<br>
  
Organizer
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Abstract
Hiroyuki N. Good
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This paper analyzes how Komai Reiko—the first “Miss Shiseido”—and Tanaka Chiyo—“Japan’s first fashion designer”—shaped modern ideals of femininity and transformed women’s cosmetic and fashion practices in 1930s Japan. In 1933, Shiseido recruited Komai to work as a full-time consultant to launch the company’s “Miss Shiseido” marketing campaign, designed to bring Shiseido’s image of feminine beauty directly to consumers through beauty demonstrations.  A prominent advocate for working women’s rights, Komai accepted Shiseido’s offer precisely because she knew it would increase her visibility as an example of the progressive Japanese woman—she subsequently gained fame as a beauty expert who was at once a wife, mother, and successful, working woman. In 1932, Tanaka began her career at Kanebo, where she taught women how to use the company’s textiles to make Western-style clothes and quickly became a leading expert on women’s fashion. Like Komai, Tanaka balanced her career with her duties as a wife and mother and she fiercely disagreed with the notion that Japanese women should wear kimono for the sake of the nation or Japanese tradition, arguing instead that women deserved the right to choose clothes that suited their modern lifestyles. Komai and Tanaka did not identify themselves as feminists, but their careers enabled them to challenge traditional feminine norms and empower Japanese women to act as subjects with the capacity to shape ideals of femininity through their consumption practices and the choices they made in assembling their appearance. <br>
Japanese Bibliographer
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<br>
University of Pittsburgh
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Paper 2.  Annika A. Culver, University of North Carolina at Pembroke<br>
Chair, Japanese Company Histories (Shashi) Interest Group
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Shiseido’s ‘Empire of Beauty’: Marketing Japanese Modernity in Manchukuo, 1932-1945<br>
  
Panel Moderator
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Abstract<br>
Richard Smethurst
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During the 1931-45 Japanese occupation of northeast China, Japanese businesses, including Shiseidô, extended their reach into Manchukuo, where the Japanese modernity they sold communicated success and prosperity under imperial Japan's auspices. In 1931, the company's first outlet opened in Dairen, and by 1937, its Mobile Beauty Salons traversed the Japanese empire with "Miss Shiseidô" representatives passing through Manchurian cities.  Throughout the colonies, Shiseidô expanded a view of Japanese women's flawless white skin, along with their willingness to embrace modern, scientific rational practices to improve domestic life.  The company's vision of imperial beauty for the continent emphasized a harmonious melding of Japanese science and Chinese tradition, beginning with the Blue Bird line (seichô in Japanese, qingniao in Chinese) of soaps, detergents, and toothpaste made by Mitsui for "Manchurian" customers and exported to Manchukuo after 1932.  Shiseidô targeted marketing strategies specifically to colonial Japanese and “Manchurian” consumers, with Blue Bird's signature yellow boxes featuring Japanese script instead of English to communicate Japanese modernity.  In 1940, after the company built its own Manchukuo-based factory, Japanese-born Manchurian Film Association star Ri Kôran even posed for cosmetics posters as the archetypal Chinese modern girl with bobbed, permed hair. Shiseidô’s unique modernist visual culture sold images of an empire of beauty, where women consumers on the continent helped support an emerging politics of national identity in their product choices. The company's intersection of modernist advertising and national propaganda reveals the multifaceted interests of organizations like Shiseidô involved in marketing the Japanese empire and its appealing modernity.<br>
UCIS Research Professor, Department of History
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<br>
University of Pittsburgh
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Paper 3. Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University<br>
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Shiseido and Transwar Design: The Case of Yamana Ayao<br>
  
Presenters
 
1 Charles Andrews
 
Visiting Assistant Professor, Division of Social Sciences (History)
 
Transylvania University (2011-2012)
 
  
The Limits of an Indispensible History: Nittsū's Company History as a Guide to the Early Modern Origins of Japan's Modern Communications
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Abstract<br>
The researcher of modern Japanese economic or business history will undoubtedly run across references to commemorative in-house histories of specific organizations--Shashi--in the initial stages of research.  The utility of these histories to the researcher will of course depend on a variety of factors, but as they become increasingly available in the West through the collaborative efforts of librarians and scholars both in the US and Japan, examples of how such materials have informed specific research should encourage scholars to explore their potential.
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Renowned designer and art director, Yamana Ayao (1897-1980) worked for Shiseido on and off from 1929 until 1969. When he first joined the Shiseido design division, critics humorously asked, “Will Yamana become Shiseido-ized or will Shiseido become Yamana-ized?” They quickly came to the conclusion that Shiseido was Yamana-ized, as the designer’s distinctive style became synonymous with Shiseido advertising all the way through the early postwar period. While the war often stands as an insurmountable divide that seemingly severs cultural developments in Japan right at mid century, the transwar continuities can be more striking than the ruptures. This divide is particularly apparent in the history of design, despite the fact that advertising and propaganda production seamlessly traded places through the war, and the same roster of professional designers and advertising specialists who worked throughout the 1930s and 40s reconstituted the design world immediately after the end of the Occupation. As a founding member of the important advertising design associations: the Tokyo Advertising Art Association (1931), Nippon Kōbō (1933), and the influential Japan Advertising Artists Club (1951), and as a key designer for Shiseido and many major corporations into the postwar period, Yamana’s enormous contribution to the public visual sphere across the twentieth century is indisputable. Thus, his work for Shiseido provides a valuable opportunity to explore often neglected transwar connections, illuminating how postwar design and advertising was built on a deep foundation of practice and a professional network developed in the prewar and wartime periods.<br>
This paper introduces the company history of Nippon Express (Nippon Tsūun Kabushiki Kaisha, or Nittsū), now a global transport and logistics corporation.  While Nittsū's 1962 company history commemorates the 25th anniversary of the company as a post-war private business, this shashi directly traces Nittsū's origins to the late Tokugawa period (1600-1868), and indirectly to the emergence of the great merchant transporters of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto.  For the researcher of Japan's early modern communications Nittsū's history is an indispensible guide to the emergence of major transporters and their relationships to their clientele, the Tokugawa government, and to each other. But in drawing both explicit and implicit connections with the foremost transporters of early modern Japan, Nittsū's history leaves the researcher with compelling questions about the extent of Tokugawa Japan's interconnectedness and development of competing transporters as Japan modernized.
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<br>
 
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Discussant: Sarah Frederick, Boston University<br>
2 KADOKURA Yuriko
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<br>
Librarian
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Organizer and contact parson: Hiroyuki N. Good, hng2@pitt.edu, University of Pittsburgh<br>
Resource Center for the History of Entrepreneurship
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Shibusawa Eiichi Memorial Foundation
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The Great Kanto Earthquake as Seen in Shashi
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Since the Meiji period, companies throughout Japan have published shashi, or company histories. Shashi contain not only the company’s history and business, but also numerous descriptions of the contemporary social environment including the effects of disasters and war. Shashi show how various companies, and Japanese society as a whole, dealt with the difficulties they faced, how they chose their path to recovery, and how they recorded these actions to share with future generations. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, the category "Disaster and Revival as Seen in Shashi" was added to the Research Center for the History of Entrepreneurship’s blog. The category allows users to access information from the "Company History Index Database Project," which is currently under construction, and introduces shashi including articles on "Disaster and Revival", especially the Great Kanto Earthquake.
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3  Martha Chaiklin
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Assistant Professor, History Department
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University of Pittsburgh
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The March Forward: The Mechanization of Shoe Production in Meiji Japan
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One of the most iconic images of modernization in Japan is the photograph of Sakamoto Ryoma in full samurai regalia, except for his feet, which were shod in brogans.  Nevertheless, Ryoma’s boots were not a symbol of modern production, but instead were probably custom-made by hand using time-honed techniques.  Images of Japanese people dressed in Western clothing are commonly used to exemplify modernization, yet the shift from traditional dress forms was neither immediate nor linear.
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Shoes represent one important aspect of this change and in terms of technological development are a more interesting case study than clothing.  Specifically, weaving and sewing are some of the earliest mechanized technologies, but shoe construction is complex and requires a number of steps that require different technologies.
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This paper will examine how western footwear was adopted and produced in nineteenth century Japan.  Contemporary newspapers, magazines, company histories and fiction will be utilized to place mechanization within a social, political and economic context.  It will discuss the interaction between the Meiji government, especially the Ministries of the Army and Navy, and the private sector and the introduction of technologies that led to from traditional footwear produced by burakumin or as a by-industry on farms to cordwainers, cottage industry and ultimately mechanized mass production.  
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Discussant
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David G. Wittner
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Professor of History
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UTICA College
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Latest revision as of 23:04, 25 January 2013

The Shiseido Culture: Design, Fashion and Marketing

Sponsored by Japanese Company Histories Interest Group (Shashi Group)
Sunday, March 24, 2013 10:15 am – 12:15 pm, Session# 357
Manchester Grand Hyatt / Madeline D
San Diego, CA


Abstract of Panel:
Shiseido Cosmetics Company commemorated 140 years anniversary in 2012. The company has built originality that is worthy of being called the Shiseido Culture with its excellent business sense and design and becomes world renowned brand. The company has cultivated and re-edit and continually communicate the Shiseido Culture within and outside of the company and it makes contributions to society through design and marketing. The company has also considers the Shiseido Culture and its history to be an important management asset and has published more than 60 titles of Shashi, or company history books, and publications related to design and advertisement since 1957. For researchers who study art history, cultural history and business history, these publications are very important primary resources. This panel invites four researchers to discuss how the Shiseido Culture have had effects on history of design and advertisements in Japan, relationship between imperial Japan and women’s fashion, and Japanese marketing in colonies.

Chair: Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University

Paper 1. Rebecca Nickerson, Ph.D., Independent Scholar
Designing Women: Miss Shiseido, Tanaka Chiyo, and the Making of Imperial Style in Japan

Abstract This paper analyzes how Komai Reiko—the first “Miss Shiseido”—and Tanaka Chiyo—“Japan’s first fashion designer”—shaped modern ideals of femininity and transformed women’s cosmetic and fashion practices in 1930s Japan. In 1933, Shiseido recruited Komai to work as a full-time consultant to launch the company’s “Miss Shiseido” marketing campaign, designed to bring Shiseido’s image of feminine beauty directly to consumers through beauty demonstrations. A prominent advocate for working women’s rights, Komai accepted Shiseido’s offer precisely because she knew it would increase her visibility as an example of the progressive Japanese woman—she subsequently gained fame as a beauty expert who was at once a wife, mother, and successful, working woman. In 1932, Tanaka began her career at Kanebo, where she taught women how to use the company’s textiles to make Western-style clothes and quickly became a leading expert on women’s fashion. Like Komai, Tanaka balanced her career with her duties as a wife and mother and she fiercely disagreed with the notion that Japanese women should wear kimono for the sake of the nation or Japanese tradition, arguing instead that women deserved the right to choose clothes that suited their modern lifestyles. Komai and Tanaka did not identify themselves as feminists, but their careers enabled them to challenge traditional feminine norms and empower Japanese women to act as subjects with the capacity to shape ideals of femininity through their consumption practices and the choices they made in assembling their appearance.

Paper 2. Annika A. Culver, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Shiseido’s ‘Empire of Beauty’: Marketing Japanese Modernity in Manchukuo, 1932-1945

Abstract
During the 1931-45 Japanese occupation of northeast China, Japanese businesses, including Shiseidô, extended their reach into Manchukuo, where the Japanese modernity they sold communicated success and prosperity under imperial Japan's auspices. In 1931, the company's first outlet opened in Dairen, and by 1937, its Mobile Beauty Salons traversed the Japanese empire with "Miss Shiseidô" representatives passing through Manchurian cities. Throughout the colonies, Shiseidô expanded a view of Japanese women's flawless white skin, along with their willingness to embrace modern, scientific rational practices to improve domestic life. The company's vision of imperial beauty for the continent emphasized a harmonious melding of Japanese science and Chinese tradition, beginning with the Blue Bird line (seichô in Japanese, qingniao in Chinese) of soaps, detergents, and toothpaste made by Mitsui for "Manchurian" customers and exported to Manchukuo after 1932. Shiseidô targeted marketing strategies specifically to colonial Japanese and “Manchurian” consumers, with Blue Bird's signature yellow boxes featuring Japanese script instead of English to communicate Japanese modernity. In 1940, after the company built its own Manchukuo-based factory, Japanese-born Manchurian Film Association star Ri Kôran even posed for cosmetics posters as the archetypal Chinese modern girl with bobbed, permed hair. Shiseidô’s unique modernist visual culture sold images of an empire of beauty, where women consumers on the continent helped support an emerging politics of national identity in their product choices. The company's intersection of modernist advertising and national propaganda reveals the multifaceted interests of organizations like Shiseidô involved in marketing the Japanese empire and its appealing modernity.

Paper 3. Gennifer Weisenfeld, Duke University
Shiseido and Transwar Design: The Case of Yamana Ayao


Abstract
Renowned designer and art director, Yamana Ayao (1897-1980) worked for Shiseido on and off from 1929 until 1969. When he first joined the Shiseido design division, critics humorously asked, “Will Yamana become Shiseido-ized or will Shiseido become Yamana-ized?” They quickly came to the conclusion that Shiseido was Yamana-ized, as the designer’s distinctive style became synonymous with Shiseido advertising all the way through the early postwar period. While the war often stands as an insurmountable divide that seemingly severs cultural developments in Japan right at mid century, the transwar continuities can be more striking than the ruptures. This divide is particularly apparent in the history of design, despite the fact that advertising and propaganda production seamlessly traded places through the war, and the same roster of professional designers and advertising specialists who worked throughout the 1930s and 40s reconstituted the design world immediately after the end of the Occupation. As a founding member of the important advertising design associations: the Tokyo Advertising Art Association (1931), Nippon Kōbō (1933), and the influential Japan Advertising Artists Club (1951), and as a key designer for Shiseido and many major corporations into the postwar period, Yamana’s enormous contribution to the public visual sphere across the twentieth century is indisputable. Thus, his work for Shiseido provides a valuable opportunity to explore often neglected transwar connections, illuminating how postwar design and advertising was built on a deep foundation of practice and a professional network developed in the prewar and wartime periods.

Discussant: Sarah Frederick, Boston University

Organizer and contact parson: Hiroyuki N. Good, hng2@pitt.edu, University of Pittsburgh