About the Liebig Company’s Advertising Card Collection History of Japan (1938)

Abstract

This article examines a little-studied visual source: a series of advertising cards, History of Japan, included with packages of meat extract from The Liebig Company; the series was released in 1938 in Switzerland. The company was founded by German chemist Justus von Liebig, whose achievements were primarily related to organic chemistry, new technologies in the field of nutrition, and popularization of chemistry in general. The products were advertised using cards that introduced the buyer to life in different countries across the world.
This study focuses on a series of 12 cards dedicated to different milestones in the political history of Japan. In addition to the visual material, the accompanying texts on the back of each card are of particular interest: they reflect not only the undying interest of Europeans in Japan, but also the special rhetoric that recognized the victory of the Japanese imperial army in China and Korea.
This article is a brief study and a full translation of all 12 cards from French. The material of the research is intended primarily for historians studying different periods of Japanese history, its ideology and politics, card collectors and art historians, as well as for the general readership.