Matchibako:
Japanese Matchbook Art of the 20s and
30s
by Maggie Kinser Hohle
Mark Batty Publisher, West New York, NJ
USA, 2004
64 pp., illus. $12.95
ISBN: 0-9725636-5-2.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University
mosher@svsu.edu
Author Maggie Kinsler Hohle notes that
"[I[n the mid-1930s there were 20,000
coffee shops and 37,000 cafés and
bars in metropolitan Tokyo". Flipping
through her attractive little volume,
we are immediately struck by a sense of
how cosmopolitan the "kissa" (short for
kissaten) coffee shops were by the variety
of visuals presented on their matchbooks.
This reviewer's 2002 visit to Japan confirmed
the popularity of coffee shop conversation
on politics, literature, and art still
to be found there, a refined enjoyment
of friendship and conviviality over a
hot tasty cup and a sweet treat.
Many matchbooks here advertise products
such as Meiji Milk Caramel and Nikke Socks,
or depict an elegant lady for Shishedo
Cosmetics. Some show cocktails, speeding
cars and modern industry. Their Art Deco
flappers sip drinks, puff cigarettes from
beneath bobbed hair and pert cloche hats,
or ponder their next dates. Yet at times
they draw on traditional Japanese imagery,
as when one from a series from the Kimuraya
Bread and Cake Tea Room shows a traditional
mud-walled storehouse. Another matchbook
features the fox that frequents Shinto
shrines. Some advertise entertainments,
like a performance of Chekov's "Cherry
Orchard" or Fritz Lang's film "Metropolis".
The Akasaka "Florida" Ballroom advertises
an "Eleven-Member New York Negro Jazz
Orchestra" in residence, and exhibits
a photographic constellation of the gentlemen's
heads as proof. The black mascot of Calpis
(Cal as in calcium, pis or salpis, a flavor
cited in Buddhist texts) was as rubber-lipped
and racist a caricature as any that appeared
on Parisian posters during Josephine Baker's
heyday.
One might see these matchbook designs
as part of a Japanese tradition of miniaturization
that runs from carved netsuke to
today's electronics industry. They make
use of dramatic and colorful typography,
clever use of vertical or diagonal text,
and usually an attractively limited use
of colors. They sometimes evoke the modernist
look of Wiener Werkstatte or Bauhaus graphics,
cubist paintings or Mogdiliani's nudes,
and the book examines the development
of one assembly of modernist designers
called the Group of Seven. Maggie Kinsler
Hohle writes knowledgeably of the matchbooks'
era and culture, and of the firms they
advertise. This reader's one complaint
is that the accordion-fold design of the
4"-square book makes it difficult to read
in bed; that's not a good place to reach
for a matchbook and smoke, but a good
place for small volumes of visual delights.
It is suggested that Mark Batty reprint
it soon in conventional format.