Taisho Romanticism in Print Design
- Gen de Art
- Jul 22
- 5 min read
“When we speak of the art of painting, simplicité is, I believe, most important.”
The Taisho era (1912-1926) was an immensely momentous period in Japan. It embraced Westernization in culture and the arts and reshaped social values that welcomed individualistic expression, women’s rights, and cultural diversity. With the country’s involvement in World War I, an energized sense of self-awareness crept out of a prolonged tone of darkness, generating a bright and hopeful era in Japan.
These phenomena placed tremendous bearing on “Taisho Imagery,” the term given to the blossoming of Japanese visual culture, art, and design. The French word “imagerie” pertains to popular prints, posters, picture postcards, and other images that were replicated on a large scale. In Japan, the tendency witnessed an aesthetic outpour of such published materials, which remolded cultural sensibilities. Printed reproductions utilized advanced technology from the West and encouraged modern styles and ideologies of creative expression.
Sompo Museum of Art is presenting “Taisho lmagerie: The Rise of Graphic Design & Illustration in Japan 1900s-1930s” until August 31st this year. The exhibition showcases a wide range of printed media from the late Meiji through the Showa periods. About 400 impressive items from the collection of Toshiyuki Yamada, former chairman of the Japan Postcard Association and founding member of the Taisho Imagery Society, are on display. Having passed away last year, Yamada and his vast contribution to Japanese art and literature are being honored in this exhibit.
The first part of the exhibition on Art Nouveau and Lyricism begins in the mid-Meiji period (1890s), when young intellectuals propelled their energy toward personal articulation under the influence of Western Romanticism. Art Nouveau erased the conventional school of thought and emphasized life enrichment through creative and liberated design. Mass media printing technology prospered, and the words “design” and “illustration” had become more pervasive nationwide.
From left to right: Yumeji Takehisa, Cover lithograph for Open Your Blue Eyes: Senow Music Score No. 56.; Seventh edition released in July 1927 (first edition published in 1917)
Yumeji Takehisa, Cover woodblock print for The Ladies’ Graphic, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1925, Published by Kokusai Jōhō-sha
Takeji Fujishima (1867-1943) was one of the country’s leading Japanese Romanticism and Impressionism painters who specifically pursued Art Nouveau. His works emanated traditional Oriental motifs, such as flowers, plants, and flowing water spread onto bookplates. Beautiful women’s portraits rendered in Western style significantly impacted the recognition of feminine subjects. In the cover for Myojo (1901), the goddess Venus’ facial gestures are drawn in Art Nouveau style, and the picture’s ornamental background emits the romantic theme of the early 20th century. Fujishima was quite impressed by Alphonse Mucha after completing his studies in Paris and Rome. Myojo magazine was a monthly literary publication released between 1900 and 1908 that promoted visual arts and Western-style poetry.
Recognized as Japan’s first graphic designer, Hisui Sugiura (1876-1965) was another Art Nouveau and Art Deco enthusiast. His retro-styled posters, book covers, magazine designs, and other print materials also depict the Vienna Secession trend. On display, the simple red cover design for Yūhō Kikuchi’s popular novel, Onatsu Fumiyo (The Tale of Two Women: Onatsu and Fumiyo (1915), is decoratively illustrated using woodblock print and silver foil stamping. Sugiura’s “Design Collection” of undulating floral and other nature, and abstract patterns from 1910-1920s on display clearly established design as an individual institution. He believed that drawings must start from the teachings of nature, forms and colors to stimulate emotions. The book cover illustrations exhibited are utterly breathtaking.
In the 1900s, book and magazine covers empowered lyrical beauty that evoked strong poetic imagery. The style was reminiscent of the German Jugendstil, delineating organic shapes and lines that contrasted with more abstract and geometric forms. Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934) was a leading pioneer of such an influential style. He interpreted ordinary people, including workers, women, children, and the young generation. His characterization of elegant women with large eyes, frail physiques, and melancholic looks was coined the “Yumeji-style beauty.” This is evident in the cover design of Open Your Blue Eyes: Senow Music Score No. 56 (first print 1917, 7th print 1927) and The Ladies’ Graphic Vol. 2, No. 2 (1925). Yumeji completed over 6,270 cover illustrations for the Taisho Romantic-inspired Senoo Gakufu magazine that catered to Western music of love and dreams. The modern designs for Fujin Graph, a general cultural information magazine published from 1924 to 1928, featured lavishly multicolored woodblock prints of Art Deco-styled fashion illustrations. Fujishima was also associated with his own bookstore, Minatoya, opened in Nihonbashi in 1914. It sold his designed chiyogami paper, postcards, and envelopes.
A section on Ukiyo-e prints affirms the change in printing techniques after the Meiji Restoration. The West incorporated elements of Japonisme that celebrated Edo culture. Elegant works by Shinsui Ito, Kiyokata Kaburaki, Suisho Nishiyama, Settai Komura, and other notable Ukiyo-e artists manifest the aesthetic utopia for art in those days.
The second section, Varying Creative Designs (“Imagerie”), outlines several forms of imagery reflected in art and design. With the rapid circulation of Art Nouveau and Modernism, symbolic language honed delicate emotions, like dreams, pleasure, and sensuality, blended into poetry, illustrations, and lithograph collections. Exhibits illustrate imagery of Élan Vital (concept of life, physical universe, and Japanese animism), children and maidens, the grotesque, earthquakes, and Kyoto Art Deco.
Niou Mizushima’s Ningyo no Nageki/Majutsu-shi (Mermaid’s Lament/The Magician) (1919), cover design for Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel, represents a sample of grotesque imagery. The picture meticulously details a temptress mermaid swarmed by sea creatures. Mizushima was often linked with the similar line tracing of Aubrey Beardsley.
Kasho Takabatake (1888-1966) was another artist who epitomized the modern female beauty. His portraits for magazines included finely drawn boys and bewitching girls in Western fashion and adorning accessories, which were quickly followed by young female readers. This image became known as “Kasho-gonomi” (“Kasho's taste”). The illustration for Shojo Gaho monthly magazine Vol. 18, Issue No. 5, Shoka no Kaze (Early Summer Breeze) (1929) exemplifies the fusion of traditional kimono wear and Western dress.
Quite acclaimed among the foreign collectors, Kyoto printmaker and designer Kaichi Kobayashi (1896-1968) was loved for his dramatic, often somber-looking, and lusciously colored women’s portraits, found in handmade woodblock-printed postcards and envelopes. Some Western motifs consisted of roses, crosses, and playing cards. The mysterious Haiiro no Katen (Gray Curtains) (1925-26) reveals a naked woman standing against a pink floral curtain. She holds a huge cross, which seems to point toward outlined hearts in the black background. The impression exudes a fascinating kaleidoscopic effect. Brightly printed envelopes in pink, red, and grey depicting a kimono-clad lady with a shamisen, buildings, flowers and a red-lit candle are absolutely exquisite.
The final section on Trend and the Age of the Masses encompasses a more heightened commercial imagery in the mid-1920s to 1930s. The avant-garde era was triggered by the Paris Exposition of 1925, advanced heavy industries, modern urbanization, and popular culture. The emergence of Futurism, Dadaism, Constructivism, and Surrealism also comes to light, as seen in Harue Koga’s paintings.
This explosive retrospective of Japan’s most comprehensive collection of Meiji-to- Showa printed designs should definitely not be missed.
TAISHO IMAGERIE: THE RISE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION IN JAPAN 1900s-1930s
Date: Until August 31, 2025
Opening Hours: 10:00-18:00 (10:00-20:00 on Fridays); Closed on Mondays (open if Monday is a national holiday and closed on the following day)
Venue: Sompo Museum of Art
Text by Alma Reyes