Yumeji Modern

Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020)

Author Nozomi Naoi discusses modern Japanese design and the life of Yumeji Takehisa.

Listen to an interview with Nozomi Naoi on the New Books in East Asian Studies podcast.

key themes

• Gender and identity
• Material culture
• Art market and commerce
• Transcultural and transnational approaches
• Global modernism and global contemporary art
• Media and design

further reading

• Nozomi Naoi and Sabine Schenk, Takehisa Yumeji (Brill, 2015)
• “What keeps us calm during the chaos: Nozomi Naoi on “Yumeji Modern” and finding the “moon-viewing” moment”: She focuses on one chapter where Yumeji responds to the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 through a series of illustrations published daily in a newspaper called Miyako shinbun, where Yumeji responds to the catastrophe of the Earthquake and its aftermath.