Ikko Tanaka (田中一光)

1. What it is — poster for a guest performance by the Nihon Buyo troupe (classical Japanese dance with shamisen) at UCLA and on a Los Angeles – Washington – New York tour, 1981; one of twelve posters commissioned for five traditional stage forms by Masaru Katsumi from leading Japanese designers (V&A). Offset lithograph, Toppan, 103 × 72.8 cm (MoMA); LACMA adds DX Diapaque paper. From UCLA's donation to MoMA the same year — the poster entered the museum before the tour had even ended.
2. Composition — the format is divided into three equal vertical bands (0–33 / 33–68 / 68–100% of width) and the face lives only in the middle one. Top to bottom in the middle band: black (hair) 0–26%, purple comb 26–34%, pink gradient (forehead, eyebrows, eyes) 36–54%, white face with red mouth (mouth at 48% w / 62% h, Ø 5% w), green plane 84–100% (kimono). Left band: a large black triangle (hair falling over the shoulder) from the top to ~85%, below it a blue rectangle; right band: light grey with a turquoise circle (hair ornament, centre at 82% w / 14% h, Ø 22% w) and a red rectangle at bottom right (74–100% h). The eye enters at the eyes (41–45% h), drops to the red mouth, then the triangle's diagonals lead it to the corners — and bring it back. The text is the only element off the grid: a small block top left (2–30% w, 3–20% h).
3. Colour — nine colours, none a primary triad by the Swiss recipe: black, light grey, white, purple, magenta gradient, vermilion, green, ultramarine, turquoise. The hierarchy is carried by the only gradient on the poster: the pink airbrush of the cheeks and eyelids. Everything else is flat; that's why the eye goes straight to where the skin is. Red is tripled (mouth, corner of the eye, lower-right rectangle) and thereby ties the face to the format. The v1 claim about a „traditional dyeing palette“ (vermilion, indigo, moss) remains an unverified claim — the poster also has turquoise and ultramarine, which no source links to textiles.
4. Typography — grotesque (sans serif) (Helvetica class), four short lines, left-aligned, small. Latin script because the audience is American; there is not a single Japanese character. The text is deliberately below the image's threshold: at five metres it doesn't exist, at half a metre it says everything. The typeface is not confirmed in any source.
5. Message — at three seconds: face, woman, Japan. At five metres: three colour bands and a red circle. Cooper Hewitt (Nomiyama): „limited colors and forms on a grid structure“ that capture „the typical geisha look“ — pink cheeks, red make-up. NGV (Crothers): „angular, fragmented forms that construct an abstracted face of a maiko“. The message carries through because maiko make-up ALREADY IS geometry (white plane, red dot, flat black hair) — Tanaka didn't abstract the face, he showed that tradition had done it before him.
6. Why exactly this way — the constraint was an audience that doesn't know what nihon buyo is, and twelve posters for the same programme: it needed a sign that stands alone in the series and needs no translation. The three-band grid gives it Swiss legibility from the street; the maiko make-up gives content. Offset (not screenprint) allowed for the gradient — without it the face would be a mask, not skin.
7. What would kill it — remove the gradient, leave a flat pink rectangle: the poster becomes a diagram and all the colours become equally important. Or: centre the face across all three bands — the asymmetry (black triangle left, circle right) that keeps it Japanese rather than Bauhaus-like disappears.

Principles: modul-i-proporcija istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal lice-iz-modula jedan-preliv-u-ravnom-polju ravna-boja-na-daljinu To verify against the image: exact measurements of the bands on the original (whether it really is 1:1:1 or golden ratio — from the screenshot it looks equal); whether the gradient is airbrush or halftone; the V&A technique „screen print and rotogravure“ versus the MoMA offset.

1. What it is — poster for the 28th annual Noh performance by the Kanze school at Sankei Theatre, Osaka; offset lithograph 102.8 × 72.5 cm, gift of the designer to MoMA. Part of a series Tanaka has made since 1958 (5. — NMAO; 8. 1961 — Cooper Hewitt; 16. 1969 — UMMA: „black-and-white signs in multicoloured circles on a black ground“).
2. Composition — cinnabar to the edge. White Noh mask (ko-omote, young woman) frontal, in the lower half (18–79% w, 34–91% h), cut out from a photograph and reduced to white with barely visible grey-pink modelling. Around the mask, like confetti, two columns of small coloured rectangles with kanji (left 3–28% w, right 65–97% w) — these are titles of the pieces and performers, the programme of the performance. Title „サンケイ観世能“ vertical, top right, white, bold (76–92% w, 3–31% h). The eye enters on the black eye-slits of the mask, then the coloured squares lead it up toward the title.
3. Colour — one flat cinnabar plane carries 70% of the surface; the white mask is the negative; all other colours (turquoise, yellow, magenta, green, purple) live only in tiny squares and so read as kimono fabric, not as a poster palette. The red of the mask (lips) is the same as the ground — the mask "burns" from within.
4. Typography — Japanese gothic for the title, small grotesque for the Latin script below; the programme in the squares is set so small it only reads from half a metre away. Specific typeface not confirmed.
5. Message — at five metres: red and a white face — Noh. At half a metre: the coloured squares become the performance schedule. The same two-distance game as in Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita)/Herb Lubalin (dva-rastojanja-citanja), but here the second message isn't hidden, it's DISGUISED as ornament.
6. Why exactly this way — the twenty-eighth poster for the same client for the same performance: the constraint is that it must be different every year while remaining Kanze. The solution — never the same system (circles in 1969, grid in 1958, photograph of the mask in 1981), always the Noh subject. The series holds identity through the SUBJECT, not the form.
7. What would kill it — align the squares into a neat table: the programme becomes information, the ornament disappears, and the mask is left alone on red like a souvenir.

Principles: serija-sa-individualnim-licem ravna-boja-na-daljinu podatak-kao-ornament fotografija-umjesto-ilustracije To verify against the image: whether the mask is a photograph or a drawing based on a photograph (the screenshot shows soft shading near the nose); the exact content of the squares (titles of the pieces?).

1. What it is — poster for the two-hundredth anniversary of Sharaku's brief period of activity (1794–95); full title on the poster: „Sharaku Ōkubi-e Prints composed from Nine Circles“. Offset 102.9 × 73 cm (UMMA, gift of the DNP Foundation); TLmag writes screenprint. Image source: Sharaku's portrait of the actor Sawamura Sōjūrō III in Hana-ayame Bunroku Soga (NGV, Crothers) — so a KABUKI ACTOR, not a geisha as a PGDA student writes.
2. Composition — dark grey ground (Sharaku's mica-grey background). Nine circles: white circle of the face (centre 45% w / 31% h, Ø 72% w), light-blue segment of the crown, black circle of side hair (81 / 26%, Ø 32%), a small black arc of a topknot, olive circle of the fan covering the lower half of the face (29 / 71%, Ø 66%), brick-orange (84 / 60%) and blue (80 / 77%) circle of the collar. The only non-circles: two eyebrows and two eyes by brush, gaze to the left (y 40%). The eye enters on the gaze, slides across the fan into the lower-left corner, then the collar circles bring it back right. Title vertical along the right edge (92–98% w, 3–21% h).
3. Colour — seven flat colours, no gradients, no outline; the contrast is carried by the white face on grey. Olive and brick (secondaries) instead of red and green — the palette is Sharaku's, not the Bauhaus's.
4. Typography — bold kanji gothic, vertical; Latin script in one small line below. The typography is deliberately invisible from a distance; the poster signs itself with the circle.
5. Message — Neue Sammlung: „compositional principles based on nine circles“. The message isn't "Sharaku", but "Sharaku was already geometry": ōkubi-e is a close-up, the fan cuts the face, the hair is a black mass — Tanaka simply replaces every element with a circle and shows that the portrait still holds.
6. Why exactly this way — a self-imposed constraint (in the title!): circles only. When the primitive is singular, the only free parameters are size, position and overlap — and these three parameters become the entire expression. The hand-drawn eyebrows are the exception that proves the rule: the face doesn't look without them.
7. What would kill it — add a nose or a facial outline: the circles become illustration. Or: move the fan so it doesn't cut the face — Sharaku's framing disappears and a snowman is left.

Principles: istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal modul-i-proporcija jedan-primitiv-za-sve gest-rukom-nasuprot-rezu To verify against the image: counting — are there exactly nine circles (on the screenshot I count 8 full + the topknot arc); technique (offset/screenprint).

1. What it is — poster for the fashion house Hanae Mori; screenprint 103.2 × 72.8 cm, gift of the designer. Tanaka is the author of Mori's butterfly logo (Wikipedia, ref 2 — the only source).
2. Composition — broken white ground; a black butterfly made of four triangles (two large wings above, two narrower below, tips meeting in the middle as the body) occupies 10–85% w and 9–91% h — almost the whole format, but with space around it. Two thin lines as antennae going up. On the black wings, "patterns": solid circles (blue, red, yellow, green), rings, three thin diagonal lines (purple, red, green), a small yellow square. Title HANAE MORI centred at top, between the wing tips (9–18% h). The eye enters on the red ring in the middle of the right wing, then circles through the patterns.
3. Colour — the black-and-white construction carries everything; five pure colours only as tiny accents (< 5% of surface). Remove the colours — the butterfly remains. This is the crno-bijelo-prije-boje test passed.
4. Typography — a Didone (Bodoni class), capitals, letterspaced, thin: a fashion register, Parisian, deliberately opposite to the Bauhaus circles below. Not confirmed.
5. Message — butterfly = Mori (logo); patterns = collection: geometry as fabric print. At five metres: black butterfly. In three seconds: fashion + Japan + Bauhaus.
6. Why exactly this way — screenprint demands flat colours without overlap; the butterfly is a sign that already exists, the poster just changes its "fabric". Constraint: it must not look like a butterfly illustration — hence triangles, not wings.
7. What would kill it — round off the wings. Or add a photograph of a dress: the butterfly becomes a logo in the corner.

Principles: jedna-slika-jedna-rijec crno-bijelo-prije-boje istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal (Kandinsky/Bauhaus vocabulary as pattern) To verify against the image: whether the ground is white or cream (screenshot: warm white); the exact number of patterns per wing.

1. What it is — poster for the "Japan" exhibition, 1986; screenprint 103 × 72 cm per PGDA (the only technical source — there is no museum record; NMAO exhibited it in 2016 as Japan 1986). Client unverified; print shops write "Tokyo National Cultural Festival" — not to be taken as fact.
2. Composition — orange to the edge. A deer seen from above and behind, head lowered to graze: the body is almost a circle (centre 48% w / 35% h, Ø 62% w), the legs go down to 90% h, the head is at the bottom centre. White and pink spots of a fawn along the back; red half-circle of the ear, blue rhombus of the eye. JAPAN across the top (3–12% h), five letters spaced across the whole width, each a different colour (purple, red-orange, blue, brown, olive). The eye enters on the word, falls down the circle of the back, stops on the red ear.
3. Colour — the whole palette is secondary: orange ground, olive-khaki deer, brown and purple letter. Not a single pure primary except the tiny blue eye. The edges of the deer are soft, airbrushed — Tanaka's second gradient in this series, here across the whole silhouette, like Sōtatsu's tarashikomi when ink bleeds.
4. Typography — wide grotesque capitals, tracking so wide the word becomes five separate signs; each letter in a different colour is the same device as the spots on the deer — the letter is a pattern. Not confirmed.
5. Message — the deer from Nara (Tanaka's home town; the Kasuga deer are sacred) as a sign for Japan instead of the flag, Fuji, or cherry blossom. Writing for the Public Realm (2013) claims the poster quotes ancient scrolls and that the "elegant curve of the back" is emphasised by colour; my hypothesis — Sōtatsu/Kōetsu Deer Scroll — is not confirmed, not to be entered as fact.
6. Why exactly this way — the word JAPAN at every other exhibition goes with a red circle; the constraint was to avoid the cliché while remaining legible to a foreigner. Solution: an animal every tourist meets in Nara, in a colour that is neither red nor white.
7. What would kill it — a hard outline around the deer (it becomes a pictogram); or JAPAN in a single colour (the word would take the poster over from the animal).

Principles: sekundarne-boje-umjesto-primarnih jedna-slika-jedna-rijec jedan-preliv-u-ravnom-polju To verify against the image: technique (screen with airbrush edge is possible through a halftone stencil — or it's offset); client; whether the background is orange or yellow-orange (screenshot: tangerine).

1. What it is — poster for the Mainichi Prize essay contest on Japan studies; offset lithograph 102.8 × 72.5 cm, gift of the designer.
2. Composition — the whole format is A SINGLE NEWSPAPER PAGE IN NEGATIVE: dense vertical columns of small type, white on black, to the edge. Across the middle (2–98% w, 47–61% h) a bold horizontal headline "日本の選択" (Japan's Choice) in mincho. Top left, in a framed column, the name of the prize and the call; bottom centre the Mainichi Shimbun logotype. The eye enters on the headline because it's the only horizontal element in the vertical type, then tries to read the columns and realises it's a wall.
3. Colour — only black and white. Newspapers are black on white; he inverts them, turning the page into night — the "choice" becomes serious.
4. Typography — mincho, two sizes at a ratio of about 1:40; no other typeface. Not confirmed, but the class is obvious (Mainichi's newspaper typesetting).
5. Message — the client is the newspaper: the poster IS a newspaper. The content of the contest (Japan chooses) is in the headline; the rest is texture that says "this is where writing happens." From five metres: a black rectangle with white lettering. From half a metre: a page.
6. Why exactly this way — one operation (invert) on a found object (the page) solves both the client's identity and the theme; nothing is drawn. The constraint may have been budget/deadline — offset in one colour.
7. What would kill it — any other colour; or a photograph of Japan. Or typesetting that could actually be read — then the page would become information, not form.

Principles: zid-teksta-kao-oblik jedna-operacija-po-radu nadjeni-predmet-kao-rijec crno-bijelo-prije-boje To verify against the image: whether the typesetting is an actual Mainichi page or dummy text; the content of the framed column.

1. What it is — poster for the 3rd International Biennial Exhibition of Prints, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo (on the poster: 8 October – 11 November; "Special Show SHARAKU"); photolithograph; MoMA lists 72.4 × 101.5 cm (w × h) — the image shows a vertical format, so it's probably 101.5 in height. Gift of the artist, 1963 — Tanaka is 32.
2. Composition — black to the edge. Out of the blackness emerges a fragment of Sharaku's face (a large actor's face, tilted): only what is coloured is visible — cyan sclera with a black pupil (63% w / 39% h), red-orange lines of the eyebrow and eye rim, purple lips (70 / 73%), ochre plane of the kimono at the right edge (75–100% w, 47–83% h). The rest of the face is black like the background — the contour exists only where the colour stops. Text top left (6–57% w, 24–44% h), "3rd" in bold red-orange, the rest white; date bar at the bottom.
3. Colour — black + four colours, all as FRAGMENTS: colour does not describe the face, it produces it. Same procedure as Sharaku's mica print: the face glows out of a dark background.
4. Typography — grotesque capitals, left-aligned, four lines; "3rd" at a larger size as the only emphasis. Not confirmed.
5. Message — from five metres: an eye watching you from the dark. From half a metre: a print biennial + Sharaku. The fragment works because Sharaku's gaze (mie) is the most famous shot in Japanese printmaking; an eye is enough.
6. Why exactly this way — photolithography allows taking a reproduction of a print and isolating a few tones; the black background hides everything unnecessary and saves colours. Thirty-three years later the same actor gets nine circles (03) — two solutions from the same source, two techniques.
7. What would kill it — show the whole face. Or a white background: the fragment would become a badly cropped photograph.

Principles: lice-izranja-iz-crne istorijski-citat-kao-gradivni-materijal crno-bijelo-prije-boje To verify against the image: which exact Sharaku print (actor); format orientation; whether "3rd" is red or orange.

1. What it is — poster for the reopening (新しくなってオープン, 1 September) of the Muji Aoyama 3-chōme store; PGDA dates it "c. 2001" per the ggg library — if correct, it's among Tanaka's last works (he died January 2002). Technique and dimensions unknown; the image is a photograph of a reproduction from a book, so the colour is not reliable.
2. Composition — white background. A thick black brush stroke, almost a single line: a mother holding a child — two faces (profile and en face) embracing, 11–95% w, 11–70% h, without a single detail except eyes and mouth. Slogan vertical at top centre (48–56% w, 3–23% h). Bottom left, small credits and the MUJI logotype in a burgundy block (2–22% w, 83–94% h). The eye enters on the child's two eyes, slides along the stroke.
3. Colour — black on white; the only colour is the house burgundy of the logotype. Muji's identity is the absence of colour — this poster honours that completely.
4. Typography — slogan in mincho, with a full stop (。) as part of the sentence — Koike's copywriting register; logotype in gothic. Not confirmed.
5. Message — "Love does not decorate itself": the drawing is proof of the sentence. One stroke, without ornament — the message and the form are the same thing. This is the Muji programme in one image: in 1980 they stripped the logo off the product, kraft paper, red lettering, "わけあって、 安い" (Lower priced for a reason) — an identity made by SUBTRACTION (Wikipedia Muji; Koike).
6. Why exactly this way — Muji cannot advertise the product as a brand; all that's left is a stance. The brush gesture is Tanaka's personal register (Neue Sammlung: "calligraphic expressivity") set against his own geometric system — and against Muji's machined tidiness.
7. What would kill it — a photograph of the product. Or a clean vector line instead of a brush: the sentence would become a lie.

Principles: gest-rukom-nasuprot-rezu jedna-slika-jedna-rijec oduzimanje-kao-autorstvo (the proof is the Muji programme of 1980, not the poster itself) To verify against the image: date (2001 or earlier — Aoyama was the first Muji store in 1983; "愛は飾らない" is a known Muji campaign — when?); technique, dimensions; whether the stroke is brush or marker.