Museum of advertising

[imomus]

The Advertising Museum Tokyo is hidden away in a shopping centre under the Dentsu Building at Shiodome, but it's a bit of a gem. There's a dramatic entrance through a staggered room, then a permanent exhibition tracing ads in Japan from the flyers, banners and noren of the 18th century to today's TV ads (they have a huge archive of them on computers in a lounge at the end of the show, but not, alas, on their website). I was fascinated by the 1960s jingles of Toriro Miki, and the decade-by-decade product displays, which managed to select a spooky number of the actual gadgets I owned in the 70s, 80s and 90s, giving me a Proustian rush (and a Bladerunneresque sense that my memories, my precious individuality, my desires had been implanted, programmed into me by Japanese product designers and advertisers).



Perhaps to counter this feeling of helplessly generic conditioning, I mused about how, if advertising in the present is part of what Certeau would call the Strategy, advertising that's distanced by being in the past, or coming from another culture, is more Tactical. It somehow loses its authoritative claim on you, and becomes grist to some other mill, raw material you can co-opt, recycle and re-use. Exactly what Marxy wouldn't call hacking, in fact.



Since Tokyo is full of warm feelings towards distanced, hackable commercial material, it wasn't long before I came across some equally fascinating stuff -- perfectly preserved copies of an early 70s New York underground magazine called Avant Garde, on display in a shop in Daikanyama. Later, appropriately enough, I dined in Chanoma with Digiki and Shane Lester, a "commercial creative" working at Wieden and Kennedy's Tokyo Lab. Tokyo as a giant laboratory of the future is the theme of my next Wired piece, though it's mostly about the city's spectral, rapidly-changing architecture.

Comments

[alphacomp.livejournal.com]

My old school had this amazing Japanese advertising annual from 1987; many of the ad designs contained a sort of amplified form of 1980s zeitgeist - everything was kind of hyper-memphis, yet with a nice helping of modern typographic layout to balance it out. In fact, a lot of the current Japanese advertising that I've read about seems to continue strict modernist values in terms of its typography(from what I've seen in books, at least; I'm quite possibly very wrong about this).

Have you seen this site, btw?
http://psychodoc.eek.jp/abare/gallery/index_e.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, there was some Memphis stuff in the product displays, just to set the style clock. There's nothing so 80s as the Japanese 80s, especially the Parco campaigns.

It's scary how that Psychiatric gallery gives the images the names of the drugs they were produced on. I could see a lot of contemporary art and music having drug names if the same rules were applied.

Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica would make a good album title (he added tactically).

Hmmm...

[alphacomp.livejournal.com]

!

Whoah.

[alphacomp.livejournal.com]

Also, what happened to your gigantic white watch!?

[britpoptarts.livejournal.com]

I love your writing as much as your albums. The pictures of things I may never see, and your insights about them make me happy.

(Also, it's a nice change from most online writing. Complete sentences and use of a mature vocabulary...?! I may faint.)

[(Anonymous)]

tonight, my 10-year-old announced his definite, future plans for visiting tokyo. since he's only ever visited my parents' place, en france, and we've never really discussed japan together (i know, shame on me), it was quite surprising. i reckon he's been sneaking a peek at your blog. he could do so very, very much worse.

[(Anonymous)]

"Dramatic entrance" is a bit of an understatement. It's a stairway the width of the entire space that's roughly the same size as the remaining half of the musuem with the displays in it.

Japanese advertisement has never failed to fascinate me and there is material to be seen and heard there, but that whole building seems entirely made up of dramatic spaces fronting undersized contents. I kept finding myself outside the building or blocked by a an expensive restaurant when I was just trying to get to another floor.

-ndkent