Literature Review
Posters as Persuasion
Posters can be traced back to many countries as forms of rhetorical communication that serve the culture’s immediate contextual and historical needs. Several scholars have chosen posters to analyze for their visually persuasive functions. Sociologist Victoria Bonnell (1997) identifies themes in posters during Soviet Russia’s Stalin and Lenin eras. Specifically, she identifies how peasant women were called to join the collective farm as comrades through poster art in public places. Moreover, in London, England during the 1940s war context, posters were used to warn the public of engaging in safe commuting behavior. Such behavioral messages embedded in London railway posters were “to wear white” during nightly blackouts as well as to seek subway transportation in case of German attacks (Bownes & Green, 2008). London Transport Museum curators David Bownes and Oliver Green conducted analysis on British posters that alluded to safety themes during a war context.
In addition to the British messages communicated through poster art, the United States used posters during the Depression era in American history under the Roosevelt administration. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissioned the publication of many posters for encouraging specific rebuilding and job structure (Carter, 2008). The messages among American WPA posters, which may now seem obvious to a 2012 audience, are to “Protect your hands! You work with them,” or to safeguard one’s home against daily appliances such as the iron.
The central role of iconicity is not new to public poster art; icons were introduced in early nineteenth century France. Similar to Kawakita’s commission for manner posters in Japan, Henri Toulouse Lautrec incorporated icons in commissioned French posters in the 1800s. Lautrec’s work, however, commonly featured popular female singers, notably found in his Moulin Rouge cabaret advertisements. These female icons were utilized to encourage a female readership of French journals such as La Revue Blanche, or The White Review (Dalbello & Shaw, 2011). It is important to establish the historical time periods of these posters in order to fully understand how and why they function for a macro-level culture.
Cultural Values
The explosion of art forms in a post-war Japan intersects with the cultural value of happiness that is embedded and expressed through material culture. Doh and Inoguchi (2009) address happiness as a cultural value in Confucian societies in their longitudinal studies of East Asian countries including Japan, China, and South Korea. Granted, Japan is a progressive nation with a plethora of religious beliefs in practice. However, Japanese manner posters must be approached through the cultural value orientation of the country’s older religions, such as Buddhism and Shintoism. Doh and Inoguchi (2009) contend that there is a difference between simply feeling happy and being happy, that is, the connotation of happiness constitutes the “whole life quality” of a person. While the value of happiness changes according to the country and context, Doh and Inoguchi’s (2009) findings on happiness suggest why such uniquely crafted manner posters are found more in Japan than other countries.
Inevitably, the United States and other countries have their unique forms of communicating appropriate or frowned upon behavior on busses and trains. However, the messages embedded within Japanese manner posters are specific and contextual to preserving the notion of happiness. Happiness, a cultural value in Japan, is conveyed through the creative medium of hanging street posters. The speech act of writing suggestions for manners on posters is indicative of a “whole life quality” approach found in Japan. Even within the proximity of strangers on one’s daily commute to work, people are encouraged to remember the happiness of others in the smallest of nonverbal details.
The artful reminders of manners are also embedded in the cultural value of maintaining positive face for the smoother functioning of society, or tatemae. Communication researchers John Oetzel and Stella Ting-Toomey (2003) explain how face negotiation theory (FNT) helps explain how face is an important mechanism for conflict management styles in different cultural groups or countries. Moreover, face has been defined as the representation of an individual’s claimed sense of positive images in the context of social interaction (Oetzel & Ting-Toomey, 2003). FNT’s claim, that certain cultural groups manage conflict as a means of preserving different sides of face, adds a layer of intertextuality in Japanese manner posters. The rationale behind producing such manner posters is inherently supported by FNT, since posters function to protect the public’s perception of a fellow, everyday bus or train rider’s positive and friendly face. Without any posters hanging on the walls in public places, the positive perception of one another is further at stake. The absence of posters hanging in subways and train stations would create more possibility for negative impressions among groups of quickly passing strangers.