Kanban: Shop Signs in Edo Japan

September 29, 2017 3:20 PM

Advertising your specialty store required clever items, and here's an exhibit of them. They're very clever, indeed, and witty sometimes. The 4-foot long comb is my favorite. The Mingei Museum in San Diego is holding an exhibit of the signs that will close on 8 Oct. The text keep mentioning Edo Japan, but the dates given for some of the items seem to be in Meiji-era to me. Here's a link to the museum's main page for the exhibit: Exhibitions Kanban
posted by MovableBookLady (14 comments total)

Yeah, early 20th century would by definition not be Edo-era. Probably Meiji or conceivably even Taisho-era (or, in English… early 20th century ; )

These are cool! Not sure quite why they decided to use the foreign word that just means “sign” instead of the English word for sign, but the exhibits seem pretty cool overall!
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:02 PM on September 29, 2017

Ooh, I like the thread shop sign from the second link
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:04 PM on September 29, 2017

Not sure quite why they decided to use the foreign word that just means “sign” instead of the English word for sign

Because Agile/Lean poisoned the world?
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:14 PM on September 29, 2017 [9 favorites]

These are wonderful, thanks for posting this!
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:17 PM on September 29, 2017

Thanks for sharing. These are super cool, but I don't quite see the same problem with dating: the article seems to acknowledge that the artifacts are in some cases post-Edo period: "rose to prominence during the Edo Period," i.e. could continue after, and also "Produced largely during the Edo and Meiji eras."
posted by crazy with stars at 4:39 PM on September 29, 2017

Yeah, I wonder how many people use the word Kanban thanks to trendy production systems. See also: Kaizen.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:37 PM on September 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

Shop owners often commissioned professional artisans known as kanban-shi to craft them

But what signs did those artisans put in front of their shops? MetaKanban!
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 7:06 PM on September 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

Just a wild guess: they call them "kanban" and not "signs" because it's an article about Japanese signs, which are called kanban in their country of origin?

I mean, call be crazy, but that might have something to do with it.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:43 PM on September 29, 2017 [1 favorite]

It may be just me, but the lack of scale in the photos, which are otherwise nice, don't give you a sense of what these signs looked like in practice. The four-foot-long comb might as well be four inches.
posted by zardoz at 8:30 PM on September 29, 2017

Yeah but it could also be four meters.

"Now that's a comb." ~ Godzilla Dundee
posted by ActingTheGoat at 9:04 PM on September 29, 2017

I mean, call be crazy, but that might have something to do with it

But it isn't like, say, "ukiyo-e" or "netsuke" where arguably it's a form with no close-enough equivalent in English. They really are just signs (and kanbanshi are signmakers).
posted by No-sword at 11:43 PM on September 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

I mean, yeah, “kanban” literally just means a store sign. It’s functionally equivalent to using “wagen” to refer to a car of German origin.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:09 AM on September 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Those were really neat. I wish there were more pictures--some historical ones of these in place would be really neat.
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:30 AM on September 30, 2017

There's a book published in conjunction with this exhibition Kanban: Traditional Shop Signs of Japan by A. Pate. There should be lots of info and probably historical photos.
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:20 AM on September 30, 2017 [3 favorites]