Mid-Summer Greetings, Hata Trading Co., Nihonbashi, Tokyo, 1938.

Mid-Summer Greetings, Hata Trading Co., Nihonbashi, Tokyo, 1938. It’s a marketing postcard promoting kasuri, a traditional Japanese textile, that the trading company retails. The postcard was published the first summer after the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. It displays three military twin-engine bombers flying through searchlight beams over an indigo blue backdrop. National mobilization was already influencing Japanese daily life before the onset of the Pacific War four years later, and was being actively incorporated into all manner of advertising and commercial art.

Sending shuchū-mimai is a long-standing custom in Japan of wishing good health and to express appreciation to business partners and friends during the hot summer months. This particular postcard was sent by Hata Store, a Tokyo textile merchant, to its clients in mid-summer 1938.

By then, Japan was one-year into its Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Militarism and national mobilization heavily influenced daily life, advertising, and commercial art. Even everyday business greeting cards incorporated air defense motifs, tanks, warplanes, and warships in sometimes evocative patriotic imagery.

There are four types of kasuri textile listed on the postcard from the four main production centers — kurume, from Fukuoka; iyo, from Ehime; bingo, from Hiroshima; and Yamato shiro (white ikat), from Nara — that represent the most famous regional kasuri producers in Japan, widely used for daily wear at the time.

The ikat technique entered Japan around the late 14th to 15th centuries via the Ryukyu Kingdom (modern-day Okinawa) from Southeast Asia. The technique was adopted by weavers and spread throughout Japan during the Edo period (1603–1867), quickly becoming the preferred fabric because of karusi‘s durability and practical designs.

Traditional Japanese kasuri often features indigo dye paired with white cotton or hemp, yielding deep blue and white geometric, floral, or symbolic motifs.