The Arts of Japan

The Brittle Decade

Visualizing Japan in the 1930s

Dower, John W. et al.MFA Publications · 2012

Cover of The Brittle Decade

Details

Title
The Brittle Decade
Subtitle
Visualizing Japan in the 1930s
Publication Date
2012
Language
English
Media
Print
Page Count
208
Format
Hardcover
ISBN 13
978-0878467693
Publisher
MFA Publications
Contributors
Atkins, Jacqueline M.
Dower, John W.
Nishimura Morse, Anne
Sharf, Frederic A.

Blurb

Modernity took many forms in 1930s Japan, but in the tumultuous years before militarism pushed the country toward global aggression, it was most visibly associated with a glittering consumer culture. Inundated with western jazz-age trends and new technologies, Japan’s big cities, especially Tokyo, offered the most enticing attractions to a newly liberated generation: bustling streets of department stores, cafés and teahouses, movie theaters and ballroom dance halls. Modern architecture, industrial design and fashion overshadowed traditional arts as Japan strove to take its place in a cosmopolitan world.

The Brittle Years examines the different ways in which designers and artists visualized what it meant to be modern in Japan in the years leading up to World War II. Its 160 full-color illustrations of paintings, textiles and graphic arts are astonishing not only for their great visual impact but also for the insight they provide into a rapidly transforming nation. Among the more surprising images are kimonos bearing patterns of tanks or futuristic cityscapes, paintings of fashionable Japanese women with bobbed hair in western dress and handbills of factory and agricultural workers joined in solidarity. Essays by leading experts on Japanese art and history, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning author John W. Dower, elucidate the many tensions within Japanese society and show how and why such images of power, progress, and beauty helped the nation celebrate and divert modernity to new purposes during these brittle years.

Table of Contents

  • Modernity and Militarism
    Dower, John W.
    9
  • Modern Girls in the Palace of Lyrical Elegance
    Nishimura Morse, Anne
    51
  • Wearing Novelty
    Atkins, Jacqueline M.
    91
  • Shōwa Sophistication
    Sharf, Frederic A.
    145
  • Notes
    175
  • Glossary of Textile Terms
    182
  • Further Reading
    183
  • List of Illustrations
    185
  • Index
    199