Russian constructivist graphic design, which had been accepted in East Asia since the 1920s, has been developed with differences in each country and region since the Manchurian Incident in 1931. In the case of Japan, major designers who were engaged i...
Russian constructivist graphic design, which had been accepted in East Asia since the 1920s, has been developed with differences in each country and region since the Manchurian Incident in 1931. In the case of Japan, major designers who were engaged in radical activities such as the Proletarian Art Movement were released after arrest, weakening the intensity of their activities or showing an attitude of active war cooperation. The case of Masamu Yanase and Tomoyoshi Murayama is the weakened case, and the case of Hara Haromu is the latter. In particular, Hara Hiromu maximized the function of the propaganda medium of photography by combining typography and photography and actively utilizing the techniques of photomontage. FRONT, a pictorial published by Eastern history through the Japanese workshop and the Central workshop, was influenced by Soviet Russia's photography magazine "Soviet Russia under construction" and was characterized by photomontage with an intense impact.
In colonial Joseon and Taiwan, magazine covers influenced by Russian constructivism were produced until the first half of the 1930s, but they disappeared after the late 1930s, when the fascist system was strengthened after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. In Manchukuo, graphic designs, including official pictorials, were used in propaganda. In contrast, among graphic designers around Lu Xun, Chen Juntao was the most active in creating graphic designs that adopted Russian constructivism in China. In graphic design in the early 1930s, influenced by Rodchenko, he made novel attempts, such as using newly created Chinese character typography with strong impact, but as the Japanese invasion intensified, he left graphic designs using straightforward graphics related to propaganda and photomontage. In addition, patterned graphic designs coexisted during the same period by using symbols such as red stars with red and black as the main colors. In some cases, a combination of red and black graphics separated from ideology left only a visual impact.