# Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)

> Luxury photo-propaganda magazines that imperial Japan sent abroad, 1934–45. Natori Yōnosuke's Nippon Kōbō, founded in Tokyo in 1933, made the quarterly NIPPON for Western readers in English, German, French and Spanish; FRONT, launched in 1942 at Tōhōsha by other founders of the first Nippon Kōbō, addressed occupied Asia. Both joined German New Photography to photomontage: cut-out and airbrushed photographs set against painted or airbrushed figures and grounds, giant close-ups and abrupt jumps in scale under a masthead of wide-spaced capitals.

- Period: 1933–1945
- Where: East Asia
- Origin: Tokyo: Nippon Kōbō, founded in 1933 by Natori Yōnosuke, back from Germany where he had been a contract photographer for Ullstein, with Kimura Ihei, Hara Hiromu, Ina Nobuo and Okada Sōzō. The group split within a year; Natori and Erna Mecklenburg refounded it and launched NIPPON in 1934. Renamed Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei in 1939, it had branches in Osaka, Nanjing, Shanghai, Canton and Shinkyō by 1940. The other founders formed Chūō Kōbō; Okada set up Tōhōsha in 1941, took on many of its members, among them Kimura and Hara, and published FRONT from 1942 until 1945. Hara, whose self-published book of 1932 introduced the new typography theorised by Moholy-Nagy and others, headed FRONT's design.
- Branch: Rational modernism
- Also known as: Nippon Kōbō, Nihon Kōbō, Nippon Studio, NIPPON magazine style, Taigai senden zasshi (Japanese overseas propaganda magazines)
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/nippon-kobo/

## Use it with care

This is the propaganda of imperial Japan during its wars in China and Southeast Asia. NIPPON courted Western readers while presenting Manchukuo, a puppet state, as Japan's friend and showing colonised Korea and Taiwan as parts of Japan, and Nippon Kōbō ran branches in occupied China; FRONT sold the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' to the peoples under Japanese rule and staged its pictures, captioning paratroopers photographed at an exercise camp in Miyazaki as the assault on Palembang. Borrow the means (cut-out photomontage, close-ups, wide-spaced mastheads, captions in several languages), never the subjects as decoration: no soldiers, warships, Rising Sun (kyokujitsu) rays or other military flags, shrine gates or Co-Prosperity slogans as retro styling, and no colonised people posed as grateful subjects. Do not fake documentary photographs of real events, and never present a generated image as a page of NIPPON or FRONT. Photographs and designs by Domon Ken, Kamekura Yūsaku and others may still be in copyright: license them or make your own.

## How it works

- Build the cover from cut-out photographs: set a figure or object against a flat colour field, a painted or airbrushed ground or another photograph, and jump abruptly in scale between a giant painted or airbrushed form and a small photographed figure (Kōno Takashi's NIPPON no. 7: an airbrushed profile beside a tiny photographed sprinter).
- Let one close-up fill the page: a single face cropped tight and run to the edges, with the text cut to a masthead, an issue number and a line of caption (NIPPON no. 6; a sailor's head in profile on FRONT nos. 1–2, 1942).
- Run a near-fixed masthead of widely spaced capitals across the top, a light geometric sans on most NIPPON covers or a heavy slab serif on FRONT, and change mainly the picture and the large issue numeral below it.
- Montage the old nation into the modern one: set a painted or costumed figure, a craft or a harvest against modern architecture, a machine or a geometric ground so that tradition and industry read as one picture (NIPPON no. 1: a doll-like figure in a red kimono against an apartment block; no. 3: an aeroplane over painted leaves; no. 14: a man holding raw cotton against a brick-striped tower).
- Put a multilingual line on the cover: the subtitle in small Latin capitals in English, German, French and Spanish with a line of Japanese beside them (NIPPON no. 4, 1935) or set in a ring around the image (no. 5). Inside, run the text in one main language, with translations in a supplement (NIPPON no. 28, 1941: English, with German, French and Spanish) or as separate language editions (FRONT).
- Ground black-and-white photography in pale blue, salmon, yellow or paper cream, accent it with one sun red, and save full colour for hand-tinted or gravure showpieces.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Collage & layering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/collage-and-layering/) (characteristic)
- [Full bleed](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-bleed/) (characteristic)
- [Diagonal axis](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/diagonal-axis/) (characteristic)
- [Isolated object](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/isolated-object/) (characteristic)
- [Dynamic asymmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/dynamic-asymmetry/) (characteristic)
- [Central symmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/central-symmetry/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Extreme scale contrast](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/extreme-scale-contrast/) (defining)
- [Single focal point](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/single-focal-point/) (characteristic)
- [Illusion of depth](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/illusion-of-depth/) (characteristic)
- [Sequential narrative](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/sequential-narrative/) (characteristic)
- [Layered information](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/layered-information/) (characteristic)
- [Generous white space](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/generous-white-space/) (occasional)

### Typography
- [Wide letterspacing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/wide-letterspacing/) (defining)
- [Geometric sans](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/geometric-sans/) (characteristic)
- [All caps](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/all-caps/) (characteristic)
- [Slab serif](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/slab-serif/) (occasional)
- [Script](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/script/) (occasional)
- [Eclectic mixing](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/eclectic-mixing/) (occasional)

### Colour
- [Limited spot colours](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/limited-spot-colours/) (characteristic)
- [Monochrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/monochrome/) (characteristic)
- [Flat fields](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-fields/) (characteristic)
- [Light ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/light-ground/) (characteristic)
- [Pastel](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pastel/) (characteristic)
- [Full polychrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-polychrome/) (occasional)
- [Gradients](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/gradients/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Naturalistic depiction](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/naturalistic-depiction/) (defining)
- [Stylised figuration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/stylised-figuration/) (characteristic)
- [Geometric primitives](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/geometric-primitives/) (occasional)
- [Rectilinear](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rectilinear/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Painterly brushwork](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/painterly-brushwork/) (characteristic)
- [Flat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat/) (occasional)

### Ornament
- [Restrained accents](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/restrained-accents/) (characteristic)
- [Emblems & badges](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/emblems-and-badges/) (occasional)
- [Folk & sacred symbols](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/folk-and-sacred-symbols/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Photomontage](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/photomontage/) (defining)
- [Straight photography](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/straight-photography/) (defining)
- [Treated photography](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/treated-photography/) (characteristic)
- [Painterly illustration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/painterly-illustration/) (characteristic)

### Medium & production
- [Lithography](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/lithography/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Authoritative & institutional](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/authoritative-and-institutional/) (defining)
- [Agitational & persuasive](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/agitational-and-persuasive/) (characteristic)
- [Technological & futurist](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/technological-and-futurist/) (characteristic)
- [Luxurious & glamorous](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/luxurious-and-glamorous/) (characteristic)
- [Utopian & idealistic](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/utopian-and-idealistic/) (occasional)
- [Nostalgic & retro](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/nostalgic-and-retro/) (occasional)

Avoids: Rebellious & subversive, Ironic & self-aware, Experimental & distorted, Photocopy & distress, Abundant decoration, Comic & cartoon, Fluorescent & neon

Palette: #e9e2d5, #1a1a18, #e8402a, #b0bab3, #ecbf3c, #948669

Typefaces: Wide-spaced geometric sans capitals (the NIPPON masthead on most covers, among them nos. 1–3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 14 and 16, 1934–38), Heavy wide-spaced slab-serif capitals (the FRONT masthead in orange or white, nos. 1–2 and 3–4, 1942), Bold red geometric sans masthead (NIPPON nos. 4 and 36, 1935 and 1944), Thin red script masthead (NIPPON no. 6), Small four-language sans capitals (the subtitle 'Quarterly Illustrated Review', 'Illustrierte Vierteljahrszeitschrift', 'Revue trimestrielle illustrée', 'Revista trimestral ilustrada', in lines with a red line of Japanese on no. 4, in a ring round the red disc on no. 5, 1935), Roman capitals beside a line of kanji (English cover lines beside a white 日本, NIPPON no. 36, 1944)

Known for: NIPPON, quarterly illustrated review of Nippon Kōbō (from 1939 Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei), Tokyo, 1934 to September 1944: 41 issues including five Japanese editions, for foreign readers in English, German, French and Spanish; modelled on the German Die Böttcherstrasse and first sponsored by Kanebo; designed by Kōno Takashi, Yamana Ayao and Kamekura Yūsaku, with photographs by Domon Ken and Fujimoto Shihachi; Kōno Takashi, art director of Nippon Kōbō 1934–39: cover of NIPPON no. 7, photograph by Natori Yōnosuke; Kamekura Yūsaku, collage and photomontage cover of NIPPON no. 19, the 'Manchoukuo' special issue (1939); NIPPON no. 36 (September 1944), layout by Kamekura with a photograph by Domon Ken; NIPPON no. 4 (1935), the only cover without a picture: a red masthead over the subtitle in four languages and a red line of Japanese; NIPPON no. 5 (1935): a red disc in a white oval ringed by the four-language subtitle on pale blue; Nippon 日本, photobook designed by Kumada Gorō, published by Kokusai Bunka Shinkōkai (1934/37), not for sale: 32 double-page photomontages mounted back to back as an accordion fold-out, photographs by Natori, Kimura Ihei, Horino Masao, Watanabe Yoshio, Domon Ken and other Nihon Kōbō members; FRONT, Tōhōsha (1942–45), founded by Okada Sōzō with Hara Hiromu heading design and Kimura Ihei photography: 42 × 28 cm, full-colour gravure, the first double issue (nos. 1–2, Marines) in Japanese and 15 other languages; modelled on the Soviet SSSR na stroike; FRONT no. 7 (1943), 'Japanese Army Paratroop Units': cover by Hara Hiromu; an airbrushed montage by Ogawa Toraji joins two photographs into one impossible wide view; Exhibition 'Yōnosuke Natori and Nippon Studio (1931–1945)', Kawasaki City Museum (2006), with about 400 magazines, prints, photographs and documents, travelling to Ashikaga and Nagasaki; catalogue Natori Yōnosuke to Nippon Kōbō [1931–45], ed. Shirayama Mari and Hori Yoshio (Iwanami Shoten, 2006)

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Grew out of: [Die Neue Typographie](https://stylogeny.com/styles/new-typography.md) (1923–1940)
- Influenced by: [Russian Constructivism](https://stylogeny.com/styles/constructivism.md) (1917–1934)
- Influenced by: [Bauhaus](https://stylogeny.com/styles/bauhaus.md) (1919–1933)
- Alike in its design choices: [Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/australian-travel-poster.md) (1929–1959), 69% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Italian Fascist Graphics (Romanità & Exhibition Photomontage)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/italian-fascist-graphics.md) (1921–1943), 68% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster](https://stylogeny.com/styles/socialist-realism.md) (1932–1989), 67% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Hebrew Poster Lettering & Early Israeli State Design](https://stylogeny.com/styles/israeli-state-modernism.md) (1934–1974), 64% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design](https://stylogeny.com/styles/turkish-republican-graphics.md) (1925–1960), 60% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Spanish Civil War Poster](https://stylogeny.com/styles/spanish-civil-war-poster.md) (1936–1939), 56% alike

## Sources

- Andrea Germer, 'Visual Propaganda in Wartime East Asia – The Case of Natori Yōnosuke', The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus 9:20:3 (May 2011) (first Nippon Kōbō of 1933 with Kimura, Hara, Ina and Okada; second Nippon Kōbō with Erna Mecklenburg; NIPPON quarterly in English, German, French and Spanish, 41 issues including five Japanese editions, 1934–44; model Die Böttcherstrasse, designed with Kōno Takashi, sponsored by Kanebo; montage and captioning; Kamekura's cover for no. 19, 1939; renamed Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei 1939, branches in Osaka, Nanjing, Shanghai, Canton and Shinkyō in 1940; the colonies in the first issue as tea from 'Formosa, Japan' and Kirin Beer's branch in Seoul; from no. 30 (1942) a military cover on every issue of the foreign-language edition): https://doi.org/10.1017/S1557466011011326
- Andrea Germer, 'Adapting Russian Constructivism and Socialist Realism: The Japanese Overseas Photo Magazine FRONT (1942–1945)', Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 12 (2015), no. 2, pp. 236–263 (Chūō Kōbō and Tōhōsha; Hara Hiromu heading design and Kimura Ihei photography; 42 × 28 cm, full-colour gravure; 15 languages falling to 3 in 1943 and one from 1944; modelled on SSSR na stroike; Ogawa Toraji's airbrushed paratrooper montage shot in Miyazaki): https://zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2015/5224
- Japanese Design Archive Survey (PLAT), Hara Hiromu (in 1932 self-published a book introducing the new typography theorised by Moholy-Nagy and others; co-founder of the first Nippon Kōbō; Chūō Kōbō 1934; head of Tōhōsha's art department, designing all 15 language editions of FRONT): https://npo-plat.org/hara-hiromu-en.html
- Wikipedia (ja): 名取洋之助 (founders of the first Nippon Kōbō; split of 1934 and Chūō Kōbō; NIPPON's photographers Domon Ken and Fujimoto Shihachi and designers Yamana Ayao, Kōno Takashi and Kamekura Yūsaku; renamed Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei in 1939): https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/名取洋之助
- Wikipedia: Natori Yōnosuke (born 1910, died 1962; Munich arts-and-crafts school; Ullstein contract photographer from 1931; wartime magazines Shanghai and Canton): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natori_Yōnosuke
- AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale): Takashi Kono, NIPPON 7 cover, photograph by Yonosuke Natori; Kōno art director of Nippon Kobo 1934–39: https://a-g-i.org/design/nippon-7
- Josef Chladek, photobook record: Nippon 日本, designed by Goro Kumada, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, 1934/37 (66 pp., 31 × 27 cm, 32 double-page photomontages as an accordion fold-out; not for sale): https://www.josefchladek.com/book/goro_kumada_ken_domon_masao_horino_ihei_kimura_and_others_-_nippon_日本
- Japan Photo Info: 'Yonosuke Natori and Nippon Studio, Kawasaki City Museum' (exhibition 2006, about 400 items, tour to Ashikaga and Nagasaki; Nippon Studio founded 1933; Domon Ken and Horino Masao as members): https://japan-photo.info/yonosuke-natori-and-nippon-studio-kawasaki-city-museum/
- Maggs Bros., catalogue record for NIPPON no. 28 (Kokusai Hōdō Kōgei, 1941): folio, colour lithograph wrappers, text in English with a supplement in German, French and Spanish; Kamekura Yūsaku designer, Domon Ken photographer; 41 issues until September 1944: https://store.maggs.com/products/nippon-28-ogfy5pgs
- Wikimedia Commons, NIPPON covers nos. 1–7, 10, 11, 14 and 16 (Nippon Kōbō, 1934–38) and no. 36 (September 1944; photograph Domon Ken, layout Kamekura Yūsaku), and FRONT nos. 1–2 and 3–4 (Tōhōsha, 1942), examined for masthead lettering (wide-spaced geometric sans on most NIPPON covers, bold red on nos. 4 and 36, red script on no. 6, slab serif on FRONT), colour, painted and airbrushed elements and montage: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NIPPON_36.jpg
- Gennifer Weisenfeld, 'Touring Japan-as-Museum: NIPPON and Other Japanese Imperialist Travelogues', positions 8:3 (2000), pp. 747–793 (cited by Germer 2011 for NIPPON's collage and photomontage covers)

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Nippon Kōbō & Tōhōsha Photo-Propaganda Magazines (NIPPON & FRONT)”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/nippon-kobo/