Saturday’s ad is for Kirin, from 1939. This is another odd one, with a Japanese woman holding a large bottle of Kirin beer over her shoulder. But her shadow shows a soldier marching behind her, which seems almost eerie in hindsight, knowing that World War 2 was looming and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was only two years away.
This is a great historical ad; thanks for posting it. This was a piece of wartime propaganda. The Japanese had conquered Manchuria in 1931 and resumed their war with China in 1937. So in 1939 Japan was in the middle of its version of World War II.
Exactly. Let’s not get our history twisted. Japanese beer ads from this time are very interesting (I had the pleasure of visiting the Sapporo brewery and museum in Hokkaido and they have a ton of neat vintage ads), but as you said, this is not “eerie” or so much about Pearl Harbor. Japan was already involved in a conflict with China hence the content of this ad.