一九五〇年代の田中一光作品における「日本的なもの」の表現

抄録

Ikko Tanaka (1930-2002) was a distinguished Japanese graphic designer in postwar Japan. Representations of his design works are diverse. However, the theme of “Japanese tradition” or “Japaneseness” is present consistently in Tanaka’s unique expression in his works. This paper examines the representation of “Japaneseness” of Tanaka’s works in the context of postwar graphic design circles. Tanaka’s design for the “Exhibition of Japanese Textiles at Takashimaya in New York (1959),” which utilized only “kanji (Chinese characters) typography,” has been evaluated by a Western sense of modern design as a work that expressed Japanese traditional culture. Without relying on Japanese motifs such as Mt.Fuji, Japanese cherry, or “geisha”, this is an epoch-making work that expresses “Japaneseness” only through kanji; it is one of the masterpieces in Japanese graphic design history. In this work, Tanaka created “the originality of Japanese Design” by a method of constructing into the design while taking advantage of the function of kanji ideograms. In order to shed the imitation of Western design, Tanaka represented “Japaneseness” by adopting the “zure (gap)” and “kasure (scratchiness)”, which departed from modern design theory, and by devising a new color scheme.