Sakura Beer, 1912

A bijin-ga-style beauty-print advertisement for Sakura Beer, from the transitional Meiji-into-Taishō moment in Japanese commercial art. Sakura Beer no longer exists as a brand — absorbed into the Dai Nippon Beer conglomerate and never revived under its own name after the postwar breakup that produced today's Sapporo and Asahi. The beauty-print convention — Japanese beer advertising of this period borrowed directly from the ukiyo-e-descended bijin-ga tradition, a different visual grammar entirely from the Belle Époque wall. A dead mark, the same as any absinthe house — just on the other side of the world.

Maker

Kitano Tsunetomi

Date

1912

Medium of the original

Poster

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons · via Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00585