Movie advertisements and the formation of a new visual environment in interwar Japan

Abstract

This article examines the creation of a new visual environment in interwar Japan through the mass production and extensive distribution of movie advertisements. It explores both the theory and the practice surrounding the production of such advertisements, as well as the figural aesthetics by which they were informed. It argues that figural aesthetics amounted to the creation of a visual milieu, which can be characterized as ubiquitous, distractive and ephemeral. Moreover, the aesthetics was incorporated as an effective mode of appeal into both commercial ads and national/imperial propaganda from the 1920s through the early 1940s.

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