A collection of 19th-century kamon (family seal) designs that once adorned kimono and other accoutrements is among the hundreds of evocative images collected in Ian Lynam’s “Fracture: Japanese Graphic Design 1875-1975.”
A meticulously researched book on Japan’s visual evolution and the product of 15 years of research and production, “Fracture” excavates the country’s complex relationship with modernity, colonial history and the cultural shifts following the Meiji Restoration. Lynam’s book is a vital addition to the international dialogue on graphic design, helping to bridge the gap between Japan’s globally exported visual culture and the deeper, often hidden stories that define its identity.
Fracture: Japanese Graphic Design 1875-1975, by Ian Lynam. 447 pages, SET MARGINS, Nonfiction.
Over 447 pages, Lynam, 52, brings a uniquely multifaceted perspective as a designer, educator, writer and collector. This kaleidoscopic expertise enables him to examine Japanese graphic design from historical, cultural and artistic angles.
Lynam’s dual identity as an expatriate observer and embedded participant in Japanese design gives his writing its distinctive voice. He has punk and DIY roots — his first visit to Japan was on tour with a noise band in 1998, during which he dressed as a polar bear for performances — while also coming from a rigorous academic background, with over 17 years of teaching experience and 10 authored books. He says he wanted “Fracture” to be more than just a coffee table book, avoiding the “image-caption” trope common to the design genre and working to make it instead an accessible resource for "graphic designers, educators and curious people — anyone interested in global pop culture and culture at large.”
The book alternates between profiles of Japanese designers (presented in chronological order) and essays that provide broader historical and cultural context to each section. The topics covered are extensive, beginning with an overview of the Japanese writing system and the evolution of Japanese graphic design throughout the Edo Period (1603-1868), linking various art forms, patterns and symbols to cultural, social and political shifts in Japan.
“Edo was totally modern — it was just a different kind of modern,” Lynam says.
The book examines how global art movements have blended and morphed with Japanese aesthetics over time, like the mass export of ukiyo-e prints during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) into Europe, which inspired European artists from the post-impressionists to the art nouveau movement. Lynam describes how Japanese-inflected European art was then reintroduced to Japan through illustrators such as Aubrey Beardsley and Alphonse Mucha, creating a cycling and recycling of interpretations still common in Japan’s visual culture today.
Lynam also highlights the crafts of the indigenous Ainu people, whose forced assimilation suppressed the abstract and intricate patterns seen, for example, on traditional Ainu robes. Although the Ainu were officially recognized as indigenous people of Japan in 2008, their aesthetics are still often exoticized and excluded from the mainstream narrative of Japanese design.
One of the most exciting features of “Fracture” is its thorough examination of the representation of women through the lens of Japanese design. Lynam dissects how design both shaped and reflected evolving gender roles in advertising campaigns from the early 20th century by juxtaposing modernity with lingering ideals from the country’s feudal era, like a 1937 cover for Hanatsubaki, Shiseido’s house magazine, that depicts two women side by side in kimono and Western clothing.
He notes how women gained more autonomy through the Educational System Ordinance of 1910, which increased literacy for both men and women and how the legitimization of gendered roles created a demand for new forms of visual communication, such as publications designed for and occasionally by women. This historical overview anchors the reader in the sociocultural dialogue between design, commerce and identity — a recurring theme throughout the book.
Similarly, Lynam doesn’t shy away from Japan’s imperialist past or the influence of Western aesthetics. His writing critiques the complicity of canonized and lionized figures like Yusaku Kamekura and addresses his role as an art director in the 1940s for the nationalist propaganda magazines Canton, Shanghai and Nippon, the latter of which often featured cover designs depicting multiracial harmony. Lynam highlights how graphic design served as a vehicle for nationalistic messaging and the deliberate misrepresentation of wartime atrocities — topics that have been largely swept under the rug within the design industry.
The final sections of “Fracture” explore the Showa Era (1926-89), a time of postwar reconstruction and economic development during which design played a pivotal role in rebranding national identity. Lynam juxtaposes the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s with the work of trailblazing designers like Eiko Ishioka and Harumi Yamaguchi, whose campaigns reflected the era’s embrace of consumerism and modernity.
His open-mindedness and pedagogical approach are also part of the book’s genesis, which can be traced to the course in Japanese graphic design history he has been teaching at Temple University’s Tokyo campus since 2014. Lynam’s personal passion for design ephemera also took him to secondhand stores and archives across Japan, including a 2014 trip to Fukuoka Prefecture, where his father-in-law suggested checking out an old Quonset hut converted into a bookstore. Here, Lynam discovered a treasure trove of rare design objects such as maps, books, photos, journals, flyers, posters and advertisements. Over dozens of trips and hours upon hours of discovery, he amassed a collection that would form the foundation for “Fracture.”
Lynam’s strengths as a designer and writer are evident, but it’s his internationalist belief in cross-cultural unity and feminist perspective that set this book apart. By presenting a full and complex spectrum of Japanese graphic design over a turbulent century, “Fracture” invites readers and designers to reconsider the relationship between cultural identity, politics and aesthetics.
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