by Margo Lakin, Trinity Communications
Her latest book, “The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan,” is the result of a 20-year odyssey sifting through the glossy, persuasive and often underappreciated world of modern Japanese corporate advertising. From the early 1900s to the dazzling spectacle of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, she traces the evolution of Japan’s commercial marketing to reveal how the rise of modern corporations and consumer capitalism transformed the nation’s visual culture.
And to think it all started with a bar of soap.
We sat down with the Walter H. Annenberg Distinguished Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies to explore the book’s unexpected origins, why Japan’s corporate advertising history has so often gone unrecognized and the pivotal role the 1964 Olympics played in bringing it into focus.
