Reiseplakat Tourist traffic poster BOARD OF TOURIST INDUSTRY JAPANESE GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS Like every other cultural land Japan widely advertises her facilities for travel which are, and must be adapted to the mentality of an international travelling public. The interesting specimens of Japanese pamphlets and folders shown here bear witness to Japan’s ingenuity in this direction. The delicately coloured pamphlets thematically arranged as they are, give ample proof of the skilful way in which Japanese advertising artists have done justice to the interesting features of their own land. The perusal of these fascinating pamphlets awakens in the potential traveller a longing to see with his own eyes that wondrous insular country in the Far East. Simultaneously one must confess to a certain pleasure in finding that the artists responsible for these delightful productions, despite the perfectly comprehensible consideration they show for European tendencies with regard to style, have never- theless recovered the genuine, oftentimes neglected link with the ancient, traditional artistic culture of their own country. Above all the style of broad treatment of surfaces characterizing their posters betrays a return to the old Japanese woodcut, which incidentally stimulated enormously the art of poster designing in Europe. It would appear as if Japan, and rightly too, is desirous of not being tOO pOWerfully influenced by European art. Transla.ed by Flora Salmond-Volkmann 54