Stylogenyin the style of Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

Craft & organic · 1910–1940 · East Asia

Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration

Also known as Taishō romanticism, Taishō Roman (大正ロマン), Jojōga (lyrical pictures), Yumeji-style beauties

The lyrical illustration (jojōga) of late-Meiji to early-Shōwa Japan, led by Takehisa Yumeji: willowy, large-eyed women in kimono drawn with an Art Nouveau contour, set among camellias and kimono patterns and lettered by hand. Made for sheet-music covers, girls' magazines, postcards and paper goods, it is intimate and melancholic rather than ornamental, and its eyes and moods passed through Nakahara Jun'ichi into shōjo manga.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

01

How it works

  • Make one elongated, willowy figure with a drooping head and oversized, melancholy eyes the whole subject.
  • Contour the figure with a flowing, Art Nouveau-derived line and fill kimono and ground with flat chiyogami-style pattern repeats.
  • Keep colour soft and muted on cream paper, with a single accent of camellia red.
  • Hand-letter titles into the picture, mixing kanji, kana and Latin script, vertically and horizontally.
  • Mix Japanese dress with modern Western props (parasols, boater hats, Western dresses) to stage a wistful modern girl.
  • Design for small, intimate formats: sheet-music and magazine covers, postcards, envelopes and textiles.

Tokyo, Japan: girls' and women's magazines, the Senow sheet-music series and Takehisa Yumeji's Minatoya shop (1914–16)

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Horror vacui, Abundant decoration, Straight photography, Angular & zigzag, Geometric primitives, Grotesque & neo-grotesque, Agitational & persuasive

Palette

  • #f1e8d5
  • #d98b8f
  • #3b4a6b
  • #c9a548
  • #b8333a
  • #9bb39a

Typefaces

  • Hand-drawn title lettering mixing kanji, kana and Latin

    Yumeji's Senow covers

  • Brush-written kana for lyric poems

  • Art Nouveau-style Latin display lettering

Known for

  • Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934), over 280 covers for Senow sheet music

    1916–29

  • Minatoya, Yumeji and Tamaki's Tokyo shop selling his woodblock prints and paper goods

    1914–16

  • Takabatake Kashō (1888–1966), covers and illustrations for Shōjo gahō, Shōnen kurabu and Fujin sekai

  • Fukiya Kōji (1898–1979), illustrations for Yoshiya Nobuko's Hana monogatari

  • Shōjo gahō magazine

    1912–42

  • Nakahara Jun'ichi, covers and illustrations for Shōjo no tomo

    1932–40

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

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

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleTaishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration1910–1940 · East Asia

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. https://pages.uoregon.edu/jsmacollections/home/artists/takehisa-yumeji-1884-1934.html (Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art)
  2. https://www.nichibun.ac.jp/en/db/category/kasho/
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Djo_Gah%C5%8D
  4. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/大正ロマン

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.