A Testimony from the Postwar Period (2008)

Abstract

From Wartime to the Postwar Period—The Rebirth of Advertising Before speaking of the situation within the postwar advertising industry, let me touch on the state of things during the war. With the wartime paper shortage, newspapers became single-page collotypes. I was at the battlefront by then, so I only heard about this later. Evidently, with the war and shortages, there was no room for newspapers to waste on advertising. However, corporations still had publicity managers. Arai Seiichirō and Imaizumi Takeji, who were working for Morinaga and Marumiya at the time, were saying we can’t just sit around and do nothing: we should be working for our country.1 So they called on their fellow advertising managers and in 1940 formed the Society for the Study of Media Technology (Hōdō Gijutsu Kenkyūkai).2 Even the government realized their need for a news media outlet and created a Media Department (Hōdōbu). Hanamori Yasuji, who later became the publishing editor of the magazine Notebook of Everyday Life (Kurashi no techō, 1948-present), became their external civilian liaison. In making him the liaison, first Arai and Imaizumi, then later Yamana Ayao, Itō Kenji, Maekawa Kunio, Hara Hiromu, Fujimoto Michio, Takada Shōjirō and other advertising managers cooperated in the war.3 After the end of the war, the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Tōkyō Shōkō Kaigisho) asserted that the reconstruction of Japan was to begin with the restoration of commerce and industry. Today we have the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren) and the Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Dōyūkai), but at the time it was the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce that served this role. At the chamber’s request, Arai and Imaizumi called upon their wartime associates and formed a new advertisement research society in the postwar period, which would become a forerunner to the later Tokyo Art Director’s Club (Tōkyō Āto Direkutāzu Kurabu, ADC). A Testimony from the Postwar Period (2008) Nakai Kōichi