Ad Museum Tokyo

Ad Museum Tokyo (アド・ミュージアム東京, Ado Myuciamu Tokyo) is an advertising museum in Higashi-Shinbashi in the Minato ward of Tokyo, Japan. Located in the basement of the Caretta Shiodome Building, it is the only museum in Japan dedicated to the promotion of studies in advertising.

History

Ad Museum Tokyo was established by the Yoshida Hideo Memorial Foundation on December 1, 2002, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yoshida Hideo. In December 2017, reconstruction works were carried out in the museum.

Facility and collections

The museum's total exhibition area is 1078,3 m². Exhibitions in the museum are set chronological order and the first exhibition is dedicated to variety of business tricks from the Edo period. There is introduction to hikifuda (flyers), nishiki-e (colored woodblock prints), ebira (posters), story boards of famous advertisements and other materials. The exhibition suggests that the world's first marketing genius may have been Takatoshi Mitsui. The museum's collection includes approximately 330,000 pieces of advertising material.

Japanese advertising rapidly Westernized and modernized in the Shōwa era. In the museum's collection, there are many of the brand names from this era's adverts, including Shiseido, Calpis, and Morinaga Milk Caramel. As the exhibit goes on through the post-war era to the Heisei era, an array of posters, newspaper clippings, and the like are on display.

There are also four cloud-shaped audio visual booths, "Four Feelings", suspended from the ceiling. In this visual booths visitors can watch an assortment of T.V. commercials curated depending on the "feelings" they evoke. In addition to its collection, the museum has a gift shop, and a temporary exhibit usually displaying recent award-winning ads and their creative processes.

Library

The library of the museum is the only specialized library in Japan focused on advertising communication. The library was founded in 1966 as the Advertising Library of Yoshida Hideo Memorial Hall. It houses approximately 30,000 materials, mainly comprising advertising-related Japanese and foreign books, magazines, and award-winning advertising works. Materials in the library are not available for lending, but they may be viewed freely by anyone.

References

External links

• Official website