Author: Exposition - Hokkaido 1931.
Title: [Kokusan Shinko Hokkaido Takushoku Hakurankai Kinen Shashin Jo].
Description: Hokkaido Takushoku Hakurankai, 1931 (Showa 6). 27x37cm publisher's patterned silk, cord ties (browning around the edges); title page, photo illustrations on 35 leaves of heavy gloss paper, 12 pages of text and a plan. ¶ A luxurous celebration, with exemplary printing, of the 1931 Hokkaido Colonization Exposition. Had you heard of it before now? Me neither. Thankfully the important old men who always head such books don't take up too much space and it gets more interesting the further we go in. What's wonderful is the number of pavilions that might have come straight out of the pages of the exposition volume of the Gendai Shogyo Bijutsu Zenshu - the Complete Commercial Artist - of 1928-30. Either the same designers were at work or the organisers handed out copies of the book and said, "go for your life."At the very end we find what seem to have been the big draws for the 600,000 plus visitors: the human cannonball, the world's fattest woman, and dancing girls.

Keywords: architecture design world expositions exhibitions c20th Japan Hokkaido modernism commercial art