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| This video presents an easy-to-understand history of advertising from the mid 18th-century to late-Edo period through modern times.
Whether in the Eastern or Western world, advertising has always been closely related to the society, culture and economy of a given country. This 14 minute video demonstrates why advertising is often called the mirror of the times.
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Advertising erupted in Japan in the mid-to-late-Edo period. As commerce became more pervasive, merchants rigorously sought every means to "make the names of their products and stores known" among the people.
In order to rapidly modernize society, Japan began to eagerly pursue Western technology and social system, during the Meiji era. At the same time, freedom of speech became the norm within society, and encouraged the birth of a new medium: the Newspaper. Newspapers soon became the crucial advertising medium, spurred by the expansion of economic activities, and this then lead to the birth of the advertising agency who played the role of broker between newspaper and advertiser.
The Taisho Modernism that followed Meiji was short but florid, and brought a new style of advertising to the world. Following the hard times of the early Showa period due to defeat in WWII, Japan found itself in the midst of post-war recovery in economy, and that benefited the advertising industry greatly. The industry expanded by an unimaginable scale, as well as modernized its activities as stimulated by the birth of commercial television. Due to today’s technology-centric society, advertising is again plunging into a new phase. To say that "advertising is the mirror of the times" is never an overstatement. |
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