In Meiji-era Japan (1868–1912), a disturbing trend began to emerge in the kabuki world. One by one, prominent kabuki actors began to die from lead poisoning. In 1885, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Jitsukawa Enjaku I had passed away after a prolonged illness. In 1900, Segawa Michinosuke died; Bandō Shūchō followed in 1901, reportedly from lead-induced encephalopathy. Arashi Minshi V followed in 1905, and Ichikawa Shōjaku II the following year.Footnote 1
These were not anonymous victims. Kabuki actors were national celebrities—cultural authorities whose performances had shaped public taste and defined beauty ideals since the eighteenth century. The art form itself was a cornerstone of Japanese culture, known for its stylized gestures, elaborate costumes, and iconic use of oshiroi, or white powder makeup. Particularly for onnagata—male actors who performed female roles—oshiroi was both an aesthetic tool and a professional necessity, valued on stage for its tsuki (adhesion) and nori (finish) under the heat and exertion of performance. But the powders that gave life to the stage carried a hidden cost. Containing dangerous levels of lead, oshiroi slowly poisoned its users through cumulative, long-term exposure.
As the death toll mounted, reformers faced a dilemma: the problem was not simply public ignorance but the difficulty of displacing a product that remained both culturally entrenched and difficult to replace. Japanese women had long imitated onnagata as models of ideal beauty, emulating their makeup techniques in daily life. The visible suffering of the kabuki actors made the human cost of lead poisoning impossible to ignore. Recognition of danger did not produce an easy solution. When the Home Ministry regulated toxic colorants in 1900, it temporarily exempted lead-based cosmetics because no adequate substitutes were yet available. Existing lead-free powders struggled to reproduce the qualities consumers expected from conventional oshiroi, leaving private enterprises to make alternatives not only credible, but commercially desirable. It was within this unresolved market that Itō Sakae (1846–1911), an arms merchant, founded Itōkochōen in 1904 to commercialize chemist Hasebe Nakahiko’s lead-free formulation, Misono Oshiroi.
Trust between producers and consumers is fundamental to industries that sell products related to the body. Kathy Peiss has underscored this in her study of the beauty business, where persuasion rested on “a long-term, continuous relationship between seller and buyer.”Footnote 2 Timothy Yang identifies a similar dynamic in Japan’s pharmaceutical trade, where patent medicines, like cosmetics, were “unnecessary for everyday life,” and therefore required firms to project scientific legitimacy while persuading consumers to adopt new routines.Footnote 3 Advertising thus functioned not only to generate demand but also to educate users and establish credibility.Footnote 4 In Meiji Japan, limited regulation and the technical difficulty of reproducing conventional oshiroi prolonged the transition to lead-free cosmetics. Safer cosmetics therefore required not only chemical innovation but credible intermediaries who could translate scientific claims into culturally persuasive authority.
This paper examines how Itōkochōen navigated this crisis through strategic use of kabuki actors as testimonial authorities. To succeed commercially and politically, the company needed to demonstrate that lead-free formulations could match conventional oshiroi’s adhesion and finish, while remaining recognizably authentic oshiroi rather than Western substitutes. Kabuki actors, as victims of lead poisoning and embodiments of traditional aesthetic ideals, provided authorization that chemical analysis alone could not supply.
Most scholarship on the modern beauty industry has emphasized globalization—of firms, products, and ideals expanding across borders. Denise Sutton has shown how J. Walter Thompson’s all-female Women’s Editorial Department exported a singular, American ideal of feminine beauty by making women both its depicted embodiment and its intended consumers across international markets.Footnote 5 Geoffrey Jones has traced the industry’s rise through multinational firms, showing how Western companies such as L’Oréal and Estée Lauder built international markets by expanding abroad and adapting their products to local conditions.Footnote 6 These works also highlight the West’s central role in shaping the global beauty industry.
Japan’s integration into the global expansion of the beauty industry in the early twentieth century has largely been framed through the adoption of new commodities following the Meiji Restoration.Footnote 7 Gennifer Weisenfeld has examined how Kaō’s marketing strategy portrayed soap as a symbol of hygiene and discipline, while Shiseidō cultivated cultural refinement and scientific luxury through advertising and design.Footnote 8 Together, these studies illustrate how Japanese firms aligned themselves with promises of progress and positioned everyday consumer goods as vehicles for personal and national uplift. In this framework, modernity is often equated with the internalization of Western habits of hygiene and self-presentation.
This emphasis on novelty and global integration, however, obscures the transitional commercial work that made such shifts possible. Itōkochōen occupied a pioneering position within Japan’s early beauty industry when it developed the country’s first lead-free, scientifically validated powder, Misono Oshiroi. Competitors such as Club Cosmetics, Shiseidō, and Kaō soon followed with their own lead-free products, suggesting the emergence of a new market segment organized around safety and hygienic claims. In this sense, Itōkochōen helped redefine cosmetics not simply by aesthetic effect but by scientific testing and bodily safety—an evaluative framework that shaped later developments in Japan’s beauty industry.
Equally striking was how Itōkochōen communicated this transformation to consumers. The company relied extensively on kabuki actors to legitimize a cosmetic marketed primarily to women. While men were certainly present behind the scenes as entrepreneurs, chemists, and corporate founders, using male figures as beauty experts was highly unusual globally. Marlis Schweitzer has demonstrated how testimonial marketing in late nineteenth-century America relied on actresses to construct a model of modern femininity, one that was both aspirational and accessible.Footnote 9 These campaigns blurred the line between intimate confession and commercial persuasion, presenting beauty as both democratic and morally fraught. By transforming celebrity intimacy into a form of consumer pedagogy, testimonial advertising aimed to foster emotional trust in new products.
In Japan, however, using actresses as beauty authorities was untenable. Women had been banned from the stage since the first half of the seventeenth century, and the first wave of Meiji-era actresses remained socially marginal, limiting their viability as marketable figures in the emerging beauty industry. Moreover, cosmetics in early Meiji Japan were not yet fully gendered; products and beauty advice during this period were often directed at both men and women, reflecting the fluid and unsettled nature of beauty norms in a society still in the process of negotiating modern gender boundaries. Kabuki actors thus occupied a transitional role, carrying forward an Edo-period model in which men could shape beauty culture before Japan’s cosmetics market became more explicitly woman-centered. By the Taishō era (1912–1926), marketing increasingly positioned women as both the primary consumers and visual embodiments of cosmetic culture, bringing Japan closer to patterns already visible in beauty markets elsewhere. This alignment, however, emerged from Japan’s own cultural logics rather than as an imitation of Western advertising models. Itōkochōen’s strategy was not simply a continuation of Edo practices. The firm redeployed familiar symbols of kabuki authority through new marketing techniques: testimonial advertising, serialized essays, and mass-distributed promotional booklets that translated traditional cultural capital into the language of science, hygiene, and civic reform.
While some scholarship has explored Itōkochōen’s role in developing nontoxic powders, its testimonial campaign remains underexamined. Bonté and Bonté emphasize pharmaceutical innovation and imperial endorsement in explaining Itōkochōen’s success, yet they overlook the persuasive power of testimonial authority.Footnote 10 Yuko Minowa’s work comes closest, analyzing how Itōkochōen used onnagata (male actors performing female roles) in its advertorials to construct an idealized femininity.Footnote 11 My analysis diverges in both method and argument. Grounded in the material and historical conditions of the lead poisoning panic, this paper shows how male performers’ instruction of female consumers in modern, disciplined beauty functioned as a historically contingent solution—one that emerged at the intersection of public health anxiety, private entrepreneurship, and the gendered production of trust.
Drawing on biographies, serialized essays, advertorials (kiji kōkoku), and promotional booklets produced by Itōkochōen’s marketing department between 1908 and 1911, this study examines how the company institutionalized its reformist agenda through a multimedia testimonial campaign. It combined product advertising, didactic guidance, and editorial credibility to produce not just a consumer market, but a new kind of consumer subject, situating Misono’s testimonial campaign within the broader history of public health, commercial modernity, and the evolution of Japan’s gendered beauty culture.
Kabuki Actors and Edo Beauty Culture
Understanding Itōkochōen’s campaign requires a longer view of how kabuki actors were embedded in Japanese beauty culture well before the Meiji crisis. Kabuki has its origins in the seventeenth century, and it is believed to have begun with troupes of women performing comic dances in Kyōto. These lively performances quickly spread to Japan’s major urban areas, including Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Osaka. In 1629, however, the Tokugawa shogunate banned female performers on the grounds of prostitution, prompting kabuki to reinvent itself with male actors playing both male and female roles. Actors who played women were known as onnagata and became one of kabuki’s defining features.Footnote 12
As the Edo economy flourished during the latter half of the Tokugawa period, kabuki became the dominant popular theater, attracting audiences less for narrative coherence than for the spectacle of costume and makeup that defined its aesthetic appeal. At the heart of this was oshiroi, the thick white face powder worn actors in both male and female roles. male and female roles. Tachiyaku (male-role actors) painted bold kumadori (stylized makeup patterns) lines over the white base to convey emotion, moral character, and dramatic intensity. Onnagata softened oshiroi with delicate red and black accents to evoke idealized femininity.Footnote 13 In early modern Japan, a whitened complexion carried strong aspirational value, as expressed in the proverb “a fair complexion hides seven flaws,” which celebrated its ability to smooth over blemishes and signal refinement. The feminine beauty cultivated by onnagata onstage also extended beyond the theater, as prominent actors became influential models of fashion and cosmetic practice for women.
Fashion in the pleasure quarters reflected the onnagata’s powerful influence. Because entertainers such as kabuki actors belonged outside Tokugawa society’s formal four-tier status system and were classified as “outsiders,” they had the freedom to experiment, innovate, and perform versions of gendered beauty unconstrained by the lived female experience.Footnote 14 High-ranking courtesans (oiran), who were elite women trained in refined arts, frequently emulated the makeup, hairstyles, and even obi-tying styles popularized by these actors, even as onnagata drew on feminine ideals embodied by such women.Footnote 15 These styles, in turn, reached a broader female audience through widely circulating bijin-ga (“pictures of beautiful women”), allowing fashion associated with actors and courtesans to filter into commoner dress and grooming. Male actors thus became trendsetters in a culture where gender and performance were deeply intertwined. This influence rested on a particular understanding of femininity. Onnagata were not seen as mere imitators of women but as practitioners who had mastered ideal femininity through rigorous training. Contemporaries described virtuoso performers not as men playing women but as embodiments of womanhood itself—one leading onnagata was praised as a “true woman in every respect.” Femininity, in this view, could be cultivated through discipline and study, allowing onnagata to claim expertise that ordinary women did not possess.Footnote 16
Kabuki actors and the theater itself were deeply integrated into Edo commercial culture.Footnote 17 Products and merchants could be incorporated directly into performances: the canonical play Sukeroku, for example, incorporated references to commercial goods and establishments such as tooth powder, sake, and restaurants. Kabuki therefore functioned not simply as entertainment but as a commercial medium through which commodities and merchants acquired cultural visibility. This relationship extended beyond the theater through the flourishing print culture that emerged in mid-to-late Tokugawa Japan, when rising literacy and consumer demand drove mass production of images and texts. Yakusha-e (actor prints), along with nishiki-e (woodblock prints) and kusazōshi (popular illustrated storybooks), emerged as one of Edo’s three dominant advertising media, hybrid genres that blurred entertainment and promotion.Footnote 18
Among the products promoted through kabuki, oshiroi was especially suited to this form of theatrical promotion because actors did not simply endorse it: they wore it. Among the earliest celebrity-endorsed beauty products was Bi-en Senjokō, an oshiroi powder named after famed onnagata Segawa Kikunojō III and sold by a merchant named Sakamoto. Segawa’s artistry and grace made him an especially persuasive ambassador: women who admired the luminous white complexion he displayed on stage could purchase a product marketed through his name and theatrical persona.Footnote 19 Like many early modern advertisements, cosmetics like Senjokō relied on subtle visual integration—appearing as product placements across media such as yakusha-e. (Figure 1)
Ukiyo-e of famed onnagata Segawa Kikunojō V holding a package of Bien Senjokō by Utagawa Kunisada. The product name was derived from Segawa Sennyo, the stage name adopted by Segawa Kikunojō III, and was celebrated in a short satirical verse, (senryū) “Senjo-kō that makes one as beautiful as a heavenly maiden,” a play on the actor’s name and the product’s promise of beauty. Promotional references to Bien Senjokō circulated widely in actor prints and other popular media during the latter half of the Edo period. Date unknown. Source: The Tokyo Metropolitan Library.
Figure 1. Long description
The composition is divided into two main planes.
* In the foreground, a dark, trefoil-shaped fan handle stands vertically in the center. Below it, a rectangular sachet of senjoko lies on a flat surface. The sachet features a decorative border and Japanese kanji characters.
* In the background, a large oval fan-shaped frame contains a close-up portrait of Bando Mitsugoro IV. The actor is depicted with a dramatic expression, featuring heavy eyebrows, a prominent nose, and a downturned mouth. He wears a headband and a patterned kimono with a checkered and plaid design.
* The upper portion of the fan frame contains several columns of Japanese text and calligraphy.
* The overall style is a monochromatic Nishiki-e woodblock print with fine line work and varying shades of gray and black.
Although Edo-period advertising was rich in creativity and form, testimonial advertising as we know it today did not yet exist. Oshiroi advertisements often featured onnagata and women of the pleasure quarters, sometimes ambiguously: whether actor or courtesan, the figure suggested that consumers could attain the same stylized beauty. The brand was also listed as one of the “Famous Products of the Eastern Capital” and became a popular souvenir, gifted by samurai to their wives in the provincial domains.Footnote 20
Senjokō’s commercial success catalyzed a wave of product launches. By the late Edo period, at least eighteen kabuki actors, including major names such as Ichikawa Danjūrō, Onoe Kikugorō, and Matsumoto Kōshirō, all launched their own oshiroi brands. This proliferation of theatrical cosmetics marked one of the earliest instances of celebrity-led market segmentation in Japanese consumer history.Footnote 21
Crisis of Modernity: Lead Poisoning in the Meiji Era
The beauty practices associated with Edo refinement, however, soon came under new scrutiny as Japan embarked on a path toward modernity following the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The new government’s “civilization and enlightenment” campaign reframed long-standing beauty and grooming practices as unhygienic, backward, and incompatible with the ideals of a modern nation. Early reforms targeted visible markers of a feudal social order, including ohaguro (tooth blackening), eyebrow shaving, and the samurai topknot—customs that could be eliminated by decree as part of a cultural modernization project.Footnote 22 Whitening practices, however, proved more difficult to abandon. Unlike tooth blackening, a white complexion could be reconciled with both Japanese aesthetic tradition and Western notions of hygiene and refinement, and early Meiji beauty manuals increasingly framed pale skin as a sign of health, cleanliness, and civilization itself. Lead poisoning therefore presented a fundamentally different kind of problem: not a visible remnant of feudal identity, but an industrial and chemical risk embedded in a widely desired product. The civilization and enlightenment framework was well equipped to identify backward customs and mandate their elimination, but it had no ready language for managing the unintended dangers of material modernity.
Concerns about toxic cosmetics were not unique to Japan. In the West, lead was used for centuries, but by the late nineteenth century, advances in analytical chemistry increasingly framed it as a public health concern. Western medical literature had linked lead in cosmetics to eye disease, neurological symptoms, and chronic poisoning, and scandals such as the widely reported poisoning associated with Laird’s Bloom of Youth in the United States further publicized the dangers of lead-based cosmetics. These developments prompted pharmacists to promote zinc oxide and bismuth-based alternatives.Footnote 23 Japanese discussions of oshiroi thus emerged within a broader transnational scientific discourse.
Within the kabuki world, the consequences of toxic cosmetics were already painfully apparent. Actors had long suffered from chronic illness, but it was only around the late 1870s that lead poisoning was publicly named as a culprit.Footnote 24 On May 16, 1878, the Yomiuri newspaper published an article reporting that Kioka Gonbei, the manager of Kishōza Theater (the predecessor to present-day Meijiza Theater), had petitioned the Hygiene Bureau to investigate and offer alternatives. “It goes without saying that oshiroi and beni (rouge) made with lead are terrifying poisons that seep into the body. Yet, despite knowing this, they continue to be used,” the article stated.Footnote 25 The quote suggests that the theater community recognized the connection between lead and poisoning. Contemporary medical literature reinforces this awareness. Pharmacological and forensic texts published in the late 1870s identified lead compounds as highly toxic and noted that cosmetic white lead powders could produce both acute and chronic poisoning. These manuals described characteristic symptoms, including colic, paralysis, and neurological impairment, implicitly identifying actors as particularly vulnerable to the risks of lead toxicity.Footnote 26 Private entrepreneurs were also beginning to respond. That same year, Hana no En, a product which claimed to be lead-free, appeared on the market, one of the earliest attempts for a safer substitute to conventional oshiroi.Footnote 27
By the late 1870s, the dangers of lead-based cosmetics were increasingly recognized, but the state had little capacity to translate knowledge into effective regulation. The Hygiene Bureau, established in 1873 as part of the Home Ministry’s Sanitary Bureau, focused primarily on public sanitation and epidemic control and possessed limited mechanisms for monitoring cosmetic quality or mandating reformulation. Systematic laboratory testing and regulatory oversight of commercial products would only develop later, leaving Kioka’s petitions unanswered.
The dangers of lead-based cosmetics nevertheless continued to exact a visible toll on kabuki actors. In September 1885, the Asahi Shimbun reported the death of Jitsukawa Enjaku I, a celebrated actor from the late Edo period. Enjaku, who had suffered from chronic illness for years, reportedly confided to his son that kabuki actors “were powerless to preserve their own lives.”Footnote 28 This stark reflection foreshadowed the broader crisis: actors were fully aware of the dangers of their makeup, yet lacked safe alternatives to maintain the visual conventions essential to their art.
These growing concerns over lead poisoning coincided with changes in the commercial organization of the oshiroi trade. The abolition of Tokugawa guilds did not eliminate collective organization among oshiroi producers. In Osaka, a major center of oshiroi production, merchants reorganized under new Meiji commercial regulations, establishing the Osaka Oshiroi Merchant’s Association with prefectural approval in 1885. Its fifty-article code governed membership, commercial conduct, product quality, and enforcement. It even instructed manufacturers to exercise particular care because oshiroi was applied directly to the body.Footnote 29 Such associations therefore occupied an important intermediary position between producers and the state: rather than direct government regulation of individual manufacturers, commercial standards remained significantly embedded in systems of industry self-regulation. The organization of the oshiroi trade thus changed substantially after the Restoration, but collective systems of commercial governance persisted into the Meiji period.
The Myth and the Turning Point: Nakamura Fukusuke IV and the Lead Poisoning Crisis
Among the many reports of lead poisoning in Meiji-era kabuki, none would prove more consequential than the case of Nakamura Fukusuke IV. His illness became the lens through which the dangers of oshiroi were understood, and in the decades that followed, Itōkochōen would mobilize his story in its marketing campaigns. The significance of his case lay less in the drama of his alleged collapse on an important stage than in how his suffering was remembered, repurposed, and ultimately used to build a market for “modern” cosmetics.Footnote 30
The story centers on the 1887 Tenran Kabuki, a landmark performance staged before the Meiji Emperor and foreign dignitaries at the home of Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru. The event marked a critical shift in cultural politics: kabuki and its actors, who were once socially marginalized, were officially recast as a national cultural asset worthy of imperial attention. By presenting kabuki before both the Emperor and foreign observers, the performance positioned the theater as a symbol of Japan’s cultural sophistication at a moment when the state sought to demonstrate its modernity on the international stage.
A popular myth soon emerged that Nakamura Fukusuke’s leg trembled uncontrollably midperformance, stumbled through his lines, and collapsed backstage into the arms of a fellow actor.Footnote 31 No evidence of this incident survives, and Fukusuke himself confirmed only that his symptoms worsened after the performance, eventually forcing him into a two-year hiatus.Footnote 32 Yet the story’s power lay in its symbolic resonance: that an actor might have collapsed from toxic makeup before the Emperor and foreign guests, making the hidden damage of traditional cosmetics visible at precisely the moment Japan sought to demonstrate its modernity.
Nakamura’s case proved especially consequential because it unfolded at a moment when both kabuki’s cultural status and medical attention to lead poisoning were shifting. Reports that a leading onnagata had fallen ill from theatrical cosmetics, therefore, carried broader cultural implications, suggesting that a practice central to Japanese aesthetic tradition might be physically harmful. Nakamura’s diagnosis by Dr. Hashimoto Tsunatsune—director of the Japan Red Cross Hospital—finally brought medical credibility to what performers had long suspected. By the early 1890s, physicians were publishing clinical case studies in medical journals, formally documenting the symptoms and treatment of lead poisoning among actors.Footnote 33 Because women emulated kabuki beauty practices, concern quickly extended beyond the stage. As the Yomiuri observed in 1891, “poisoning is especially common among women, and even more so among actors,” linking theatrical illness to broader anxieties about public health and national vitality.Footnote 34 Although Nakamura’s illness brought unprecedented medical attention to lead poisoning among kabuki actors, the lack of regulation and reliable alternatives meant that meaningful reform would not come from the state, but from private enterprise.
The Campaign Against Toxic Beauty: Early Solutions and Actor-Led Reform
As medical cases of lead poisoning grew in the 1890s, a succession of entrepreneurs grappled with this problem, developing and marketing safer powders without sacrificing the qualities consumers expected. Their efforts embodied the spirit of Meiji entrepreneurship, as Japan’s drive to modernize opened new opportunities in even the most intimate corners of daily life.Footnote 35 Despite years of existing knowledge about lead poisoning, however, entrepreneurs struggled to produce a satisfactory alternative. The industry constantly tinkered with new formulations: manufacturers experimented with compositions containing starch, sugar, and glycerin, including efforts to improve ease of application. At the Third National Industrial Exhibition in 1890, one of the Meiji government’s major showcases of domestic industrial development, judges recognized the need for a safer alternative to lead-based oshiroi but found existing lead-free powders generally inferior and questioned whether they could adequately replace conventional formulations.Footnote 36 Their comments reveal a striking gap between scientific awareness and technical capability to translate that knowledge into a satisfactory commercial product. The problem persisted: by the Fourth Industrial Exhibition in 1895, 335 oshiroi exhibits were submitted, yet judges still characterized lead-free formulations as “coarse and inferior to traditional powders.”Footnote 37 Reports made it clear that imported powders did not solve the problem. One account noted that although Western face powders were harmless, they were not treated as substitutes for oshiroi: they were unsuitable for the cosmetic requirements of professional performers, prompting continued efforts to develop a nontoxic alternative suited to Japanese users.Footnote 38 The continued shortcomings of lead-free formulations helped explain why awareness of toxicity did not immediately displace lead-based oshiroi.
Technical innovation, however, was only part of the challenge. As entrepreneurs experimented with safer formulations, they also experimented with new ways of persuading consumers to trust and adopt them. Merchants had long invoked actors’ names to sell cosmetics in the Edo period, but in the wake of Nakamura Fukusuke’s illness, this familiar strategy was repurposed toward a new goal: marketing nontoxic oshiroi. What distinguished these promotions was their language. Rather than relying solely on celebrity glamour, advertisements appropriated the terminology of toxicology, scientific formulae, and hygienic rationales to reassure consumers with the authority of science. Timothy Yang has identified a similar strategy in Japan’s patent medicine industry, where advertisers blurred the boundary between salesmanship, pedagogy, and scientific expertise.Footnote 39 In the case of oshiroi, however, such claims could not substitute for efficacy: safer powders still had to satisfy consumers’ expectations for adhesion, finish, and ease of application.
This fusion of older celebrity endorsement with new claims to scientific authority is vividly illustrated in an 1893 advertisement for a nontoxic oshiroi brand, Kikyūen, which consolidated multiple registers of authority in a single campaign. Kabuki actors appeared as cosignatories to a formal “Certificate of Safety,” attesting that they had tested the product both on and off stage and found it “completely harmless” and “superior in every way.” Nakamura Fukusuke, in particular, was not a passive subject but an increasingly active advocate for reform. The campaign reproduced his letter of gratitude in which he recounted years of illness from toxic powders, and how Kikyūen’s product had enabled his return to the stage. Physicians’ certificates, endorsements from the Home Ministry Sanitary Bureau, and trademark branding reinforced the message. In weaving together celebrity endorsement, medical expertise, and state certification, Kikyūen pioneered what might be called a layered credibility strategy. (Figure 2).
Advertisement for Kikyūen’s “Non-Toxic Oshiroi,” 1893. The advertisement assembles multiple forms of evidence for the product’s safety and performance. The large vertical text at right announces “Non-Toxic Oshiroi.” Across the upper portion, kabuki actors appear as co-signatories to a certificate stating that they tested it and found it safe. Below, the advertisement also reproduces Nakamura Fukusuke’s letter of gratitude. Yomiuri Shimbun, 1893.
Source: Reproduced by permission of the Yomiuri Shimbun.
Figure 2. Long description
A vertical Ukiyo-e woodblock print featuring a close-up of the actor Segawa Kikunojo V. At the top, the actor wears a large, dark, heart-shaped wig adorned with numerous long, horizontal hairpins and decorative floral combs radiating outward. The face is rendered in traditional white makeup with stylized black eyebrows, a thin nose, and small red lips. A dark headband is tied across the forehead. The actor wears a layered kimono with intricate patterns, including geometric sayagata designs on the collar and a larger patchwork of floral and bird motifs on the outer robe. In the lower right foreground, the actor holds a rectangular white package with bold vertical Japanese calligraphy identifying the product Bien Senjoko. Additional vertical inscriptions are located in the upper left and upper right corners of the composition.
Although Kikyūen itself soon disappeared, its campaign remains one of the earliest examples of a Meiji business utilizing kabuki actors for public health purposes. By combining branding, certification, and celebrity testimony, Kikyūen demonstrated how small cosmetics firms sought to overcome not only the technical problem of producing safer oshiroi, but the commercial problem of persuading consumers to trust unfamiliar alternatives.
By 1896, actors themselves were marketing branded powders in new ways. Nakamura Fukusuke introduced Uraume—an oshiroi powder named after his personal kamon (family crest). Unlike Kikyūen’s emphasis on redemption, Uraume downplayed direct references to his illness and instead projected cosmopolitan legitimacy. Advertisements invited Japanese consumers to “place their trust” in a formula purportedly developed by an American physician and already favored by “young ladies and noblewomen of society” in the United States.Footnote 40 By attaching both his name and crest to the product, Nakamura positioned himself less as a hygienic reformer than as a cultural icon of aesthetic beauty.
Around the same time, Onoe Kikugorō V launched Otowagiku, adopting a distinctly different approach. Its advertisements offered grim details about how actors, geisha, and courtesans had “fallen victim to lead poisoning- experiencing numbness in their hands and feet, losing the ability to stand or walk, their complexion turning pale or dark with bruises, suffering abdominal pain, ultimately resulting in death.”Footnote 41 (Figure 3) It referenced the case of the onnagata Sawamura Tanosuke III, who famously underwent multiple amputations, to dramatize the stakes. Whether or not Sawamura’s illness was actually caused by lead poisoning, his suffering lent moral weight. Otowagiku blended visceral imagery with ethical consumerism, urging women to abandon dangerous powders not just for themselves, but for the sake of their families and society. Taken together, these campaigns expanded the commercial uses of kabuki celebrity. Kikyūen mobilized the actors’ firsthand experience alongside medical and state certification; Uraume paired celebrity branding with claims to cosmopolitan authority; and Otowagiku transformed actors’ suffering into a warning about the dangers of lead. Actors could therefore lend cosmetics more than aspirational glamour: their professional experience and vulnerability to poisoning could also confer credibility on claims about safety.
Advertisement for Otowagiku, a “lead-free” oshiroi marketed under the name of kabuki actor Onoe Kikugorō V. The advertisement recounts the harmful effects of lead-based cosmetics and presents Otowagiku as a safer alternative. April 9, 1896. Image courtesy of Asahi Shimbun.
Figure 3. Long description
The advertisement is structured into several distinct zones of text and graphic elements.
* Top Right: A large vertical headline in bold calligraphy reads Non-Toxic Oshiroi. Above this is a circular trademark logo featuring a stylized floral crest. To the right of the headline, smaller vertical text identifies the product as an invention of Watanabe Sango.
* Upper Horizontal Band: A series of vertical columns list the names of kabuki actors, including Nakamura Fukusuke, acting as co-signatories. Their names are organized by city and theater affiliation, serving as a collective endorsement of the product's safety.
* Center Upper Section: A formal certificate of safety dated May 13, 1893. It includes the names of medical experts and officials from the Tokyo Health Laboratory, such as Dr. Yamamoto Seiichiro, providing scientific validation for the non-toxic claims.
* Lower Center Section: A reproduction of a letter of gratitude from Nakamura Fukusuke. The text is dense and written in a formal epistolary style, detailing his personal experience and satisfaction with the product.
* Bottom Left: Information regarding the manufacturer and distributor, Kikyūen, located in Tokyo. This section includes the address and the name of the proprietor.
* Far Left Margin: A vertical column of text provides additional context or news-style reporting related to the product's release and the creator's background.
Despite more than a decade of technological innovation and commercial experimentation, the problem of substitution remained unresolved at the turn of the century. In 1900, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued Ordinance No. 17 to regulate harmful colorants. Although the ordinance recognized lead as hazardous, Article 12 contained a provisional clause exempting lead-based powders “for the time being,” because no lead-free formulation was yet considered an adequate substitute for conventional oshiroi. Footnote 42 The regulation therefore embodied a striking compromise: the state acknowledged the health risk while permitting continued production in the absence of an adequate substitute. The provisional exemption would remain in place for thirty-four years.
Lead-Free Innovation and Itōkochōen
Ordinance No. 17 offered a crucial form of official recognition: for the first time since theater professionals raised concerns in 1878, the state acknowledged the dangers of toxic beauty products. This recognition, despite the ordinance’s provisional exemption for lead-based oshiroi, strengthened the legitimacy of efforts to develop safer alternatives. As Jennifer Evans has shown in her study of hygienic facial culture in Japan, the law marked a turning point that enabled “alternative, rational cosmetic practice[s]” that transformed clear skin into “a signifier of a healthy body.”Footnote 43 This transformation operated through an emerging physiological discourse that recast the skin as a breathing organ—heavy oshiroi application was understood not merely as toxic but as suffocating the pores and blocking the body’s hygienic function. Whiteness itself was redefined in the process: the stark opacity of lead-based powder came to be associated with concealment and bodily dysfunction, while a natural, healthy paleness came to signify clear pores, rational skincare, and modern femininity.Footnote 44 This shift granted private actors both cultural authority and commercial incentive to frame their innovations not simply as safer options but as aligned with national ideals of hygiene, civilization, and modern femininity.
Official recognition alone could not solve the problem of substitution. Decades of experimentation had demonstrated that a viable lead-free oshiroi had to reproduce the performance and aesthetic qualities consumers expected from conventional powders. The French-trained chemist Hasebe Nakahiko sought to solve this long-standing technical challenge.
The origins of Itōkochōen are directly connected to Nakamura Fukusuke’s public battle with lead poisoning following his Tenran Kabuki performance. Hashimoto Tsunatsune, who formally diagnosed Nakamura’s condition, is said to have been alarmed that lead-based powders posed a threat not only to performers and ordinary women but also to the imperial family, whose members wore oshiroi during ceremonial occasions. Hashimoto enlisted Hasebe to develop a safe alternative capable of meeting consumer expectations for texture and finish. Years of research culminated in a white powder based on zinc oxide that was nontoxic while preserving the qualities expected of traditional oshiroi.Footnote 45 Hasebe’s achievement addressed a problem manufacturers had struggled with for decades: not simply eliminating lead, but preserving the essence of oshiroi without it.
Hasebe completed his innovation in 1900, the year the Home Ministry issued Ordinance No. 17. More importantly, it coincided with the wedding of the future Emperor Taishō, Crown Prince Yoshihito, to Kujō Sadako. The imperial household expressed an interest in Hasebe’s oshiroi for ceremonial use at the wedding, and its adoption was preceded by testing conducted under the supervision of the Imperial Household Medical Bureau. This official confirmation of the product’s safety lent powerful symbolic authority. The powder was named Misono Oshiroi, invoking the imperial court to signal refinement, credibility, and national prestige.Footnote 46
Although Hasebe had made a significant technical breakthrough, the commercial problem remained. Despite its scientific promise and symbolic capital, bringing Misono Oshiroi to market proved challenging. Hasebe was a chemist, not a businessman, and the powder was significantly more expensive than conventional lead-based formulas. Early sales were modest, as consumers remained attached to familiar products—a reminder of consumer agency in a market where claims of safety compete with considerations of price, performance, and established habit.Footnote 47 Government surveys of commercial face powders confirmed the scale of this challenge: the Tokyo Hygienic Laboratory found that twelve of thirty-one samples tested in 1903 contained lead, and by 1906, that figure had risen to thirty-three of forty-four.Footnote 48 Safer alternatives had therefore not produced an immediate market transition. Misono Oshiroi still needed a commercial strategy that could translate technical achievement into consumer adoption.
In 1904, the arms merchant Itō Sakae recognized this potential and founded Itōkochōen as the parent company of Misono Oshiroi. Marumiya Shōten handled manufacturing and distribution. Itō proved to be a master marketer. Misono’s “rigorous analytical testing” by Shimoyama Junichiro and Tahara Yoshizumi—Japan’s first pharmacy doctorates—featured prominently in promotional materials, alongside Hashimoto and the dermatologist Dohi Keizō. As Manami Takakiwa notes, this represented the first documented case of pharmacists certifying cosmetic safety in Japan, predating a formal regulatory framework by decades.Footnote 49 By combining imperial association with scientific and medical certification, Itōkochōen distinguished itself from competitors while presenting safety as both modern and authoritative.
Early advertisements prominently featured imagery suggesting imperial endorsement, most notably what appears to be the new Crown Princess on her wedding day.Footnote 50 However, the prestige of imperial women undoubtedly came with communicative limits: they were distant, untouchable, and bound by rigid decorum: traits that made them ill-suited for direct engagement with everyday consumers. In practice, they were not meant to, nor could they, “speak” to the public, demonstrate product use, or serve as accessible role models. At the same time, the true purpose of Misono Oshiroi was “to save women from poisoning.”Footnote 51 Women in Meiji Japan were increasingly framed as responsible for household hygiene and the health of future generations, making them the primary targets of cosmetic reform. The challenge, therefore, was to find figures who could persuade and credibly instruct women in new beauty practices.
Kabuki actors occupied a unique position. Unlike geisha or early actresses who were socially marginal or morally suspect in Meiji eyes, kabuki performers were familiar to consumers and increasingly embraced as symbols of national culture, making them a “natural choice.”Footnote 52 Itō reasoned that this was because beauty knowledge in Japan had traditionally been transmitted from mother to daughter, an intimate practice largely invisible in public discourse.Footnote 53 The emerging marketplace, by contrast, depended on visibility, media access, and public testimony. Kabuki actors brought these qualities together with something less easily replicated by other public figures: an occupational expertise in cosmetics developed through theatrical practice. Having used conventional oshiroi throughout their careers, actors were unusually qualified to attest to Misono’s adhesion, durability, and visual effect on stage—precisely the qualities that earlier lead-free substitutes had struggled to reproduce.
Combined with actor testimony, the imperial use of Misono Oshiroi at the Crown Prince’s nuptials took on added significance. Rather than functioning solely as a marker of prestige, it reinforced the claim that traditional aesthetics could be maintained through scientifically validated means. As a new entrant outside the established oshiroi trade association, Itōkochōen had particular incentive to cultivate alternative sources of commercial authority. Scientific certification established safety; imperial association conferred prestige and national legitimacy; actor testimony validated product performance. Together, these overlapping forms of credibility allowed the company to distinguish an unfamiliar product in an established and highly competitive market.
In-House Publishing and the Marketing of Survival: Shikan as Strategic Testimony
To execute this strategy, Itōkochōen leveraged Japan’s rapidly expanding print culture to target an increasingly literate and affluent middle-class readership. Rather than relying on conventional print advertisements, the company established an in-house publishing and advertising bureau that produced serialized conversations, instructional booklets, and actor-authored testimonials. These advertorials blurred the boundary between journalism and commercial promotion, presenting marketing content in narrative form. At a time when most cosmetics advertising relied on blunt product listing and hyperbolic slogans, Itōkochōen pioneered a style that fused storytelling, celebrity authority, and consumer education. By embedding promotional messages within seemingly personal accounts and instructional texts, the company made commercial persuasion feel intimate, trustworthy, and culturally resonant. As one commentator remarked, this technique represented a “new formula” for cosmetic advertising in Japan, one that deserved a central place in the history of Meiji-era media.Footnote 54
This strategy reflected broader global trends. As Marlis Schweitzer and Marina Moskowitz argue, testimonial advertising gained traction globally in the late nineteenth century, particularly in the United States, as a response to growing consumer uncertainty in an age of mass production.Footnote 55 In sectors like patent medicine and beauty, testimonials bridged the gap between impersonal industrial goods and personal trust, allowing celebrity authority and firsthand experience to stand in for face-to-face credibility. While there is no direct evidence that Itōkochōen modeled its campaign on Western firms such as Pears, which used actresses for their testimonial advertising, the company’s strategy certainly reflected a similar impulse: to resolve a crisis of confidence—in this case, over lead poisoning—by turning to trusted public figures whose endorsements combined confession, instruction, and persuasion.
These publications did more than promote a product; they helped shape a new kind of consumer. By presenting cosmetic choice as a matter of hygiene, knowledge, and responsibility, Itōkochōen cultivated readers who came to see themselves as discerning participants in modern beauty culture. Though not the first firm to produce nontoxic oshiroi, Itōkochōen distinguished Misono Oshiroi through an unprecedented form of scientific authentication: it was the first known cosmetic in Japan whose safety had been certified by pharmacists. Its sophisticated use of print media subsequently catapulted the product to national prominence and helped establish it as the gold standard for safe whitening powders.
In 1909, the firm released a series of five booklets that blended personal narrative, theatrical expertise, and cosmetic education. These included Keshō Jussoku (The Ten Rules of Make-Up), supposedly authored by onnagata Nakamura Ganjirō, and Shikan by Nakamura Shikan (formerly Fukusuke) in 1909; Meiyū Keshōdan (Makeup Conversations with Famous Actors) and Gakuya Annai Keshō Kagami (A Backstage Guide to Make-Up) in 1910; and Keshō Nikki (Makeup Diaries) in 1911.Footnote 56 , Footnote 57 Running approximately fifty to sixty pages each, and in some cases appearing in multiple editions, these were substantial publications rather than conventional advertisements. Distributed free by mail upon consumer request, the booklets were attributed to prominent actors but were in fact ghostwritten or editorially crafted, effacing the line between stage persona and commercial authority to project authenticity.Footnote 58 The goal was not to simply sell whitening powders but to cultivate a new hygienic beauty culture among women.
Among these, Shikan (1909) stands out as a hybrid promotional-autobiographical text and a form of survivor testimony. The booklet strategically mobilized Nakamura Fukusuke’s public experience with lead poisoning, which, as described previously, has long been believed to have been triggered during the 1887 Tenran Kabuki. In vivid and embodied detail, Nakamura recounts that he “got through the four days without incident,” yet anchors the onset of his illness closely to this imperial event, inviting symbolic conflation.Footnote 59 He walks his reader through the debilitating symptoms that followed—numbness in his limbs, intense abdominal pain, and a ghostly pallor—before describing his eventual diagnosis. This narrative transforms a private medical crisis into a culturally legible turning point.
Shikan then expands personal suffering into public health advocacy. Drawing on explanations from medical professionals such as psychologist Sakaku Hajime, Nakamura details the neurological and psychological consequences of lead poisoning, including paralysis, spinal degeneration, and mental decline. Medical treatises would have been inaccessible to most readers, but Shikan rendered these dangers immediate through a familiar voice. In doing so, the booklet translated abstract pathology into everyday fears, tapping into broader Meiji anxieties about illness, degeneration, and social decline.
The narrative also emphasizes institutional neglect. Nakamura recounts how his early warnings were dismissed by fellow actors who resigned themselves to lead poisoning as an unavoidable occupational hazard—an apathy that, he notes, had fatal consequences. This sense of abandonment sets the stage for a redemptive pivot: moved by his suffering, doctors and chemists collaborate to develop Misono Oshiroi. The powder’s use in the 1900 imperial wedding provided a powerful seal of legitimacy, transforming a personal health crisis into a story of scientific progress and national renewal. In this arc, Itōkochōen emerges not just as a manufacturer but as a benefactor, rescuing kabuki actors and safeguarding the health of Japanese women.
In the final sections of Shikan, Nakamura shifts from patient and survivor to cultural commentator. Speaking to “ladies and young women of society,” he positions himself—an onnagata and a long-time user of stage makeup—as uniquely equipped to discuss cosmetic practice.Footnote 60 “Looking back at the terrible lead poisoning era of twenty years ago,” he writes, “I reflect on how low the level of civilization was at that time. I myself was caught in the vortex of that uncivilized era and almost became a human sacrifice before a dreadful illness.”Footnote 61 By characterizing earlier cosmetics practices as “uncivilized,” Nakamura implicitly challenged defenders of traditional formulations, recasting inherited cosmetic methods as dangerous rather than authoritative. Framed in this way, cosmetics became not merely a matter of personal adornment but of civilization and hygiene. Nakamura’s testimony thus justified male intervention in female beauty discourse while recasting Misono Oshiroi as a symbol of enlightened womanhood. To choose it was not merely to improve one’s appearance, but to align oneself with science, morality, and national progress.
Itōkochōen’s appeal to women through the language of hygiene belonged to a broader transformation in the relationship between health, gender, and everyday life. As Narita Ryūichi has shown, around the turn of the twentieth century, hygiene increasingly moved from the realm of epidemic prevention and public infrastructure into the household and individual body.Footnote 62 Women assumed a particularly important role in this process, both acquiring new forms of hygienic knowledge about their own bodies and assuming greater responsibility for the health of their families. Itōkochōen’s campaign situated cosmetics within this expanding realm of everyday hygiene, presenting the choice of oshiroi not simply as an aesthetic preference but as an informed decision about bodily health. The challenge for Itōkochōen was therefore not simply to establish Misono’s safety, but to translate scientific claims into forms of practical knowledge that consumers could use.
Makeup Conversations with Famous Actors
Itōkochōen put this instructional approach into practice most fully through the Makeup Conversations with Famous Actors, a serialized advertorial campaign that ran in major newspapers, including the Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Miyako Shimbun, and was reprinted in the promotional booklet. Each installment was presented not simply as an advertisement but as a conversation or lesson, translating cosmetic expertise into practical guidance for readers.
By embedding advertisements within serialized, editorial-style formats, Itōkochōen once again turned advertising into persuasive storytelling. Makeup Conversations featured celebrated kabuki actors such as Nakamura Shikan, Onoe Baikō VI, Sawamura Sōjūrō VII, and Kataoka Nizaemon XII. The campaign also tapped into the rising popularity of shinpa (“new wave”) theater, a genre that emerged after the Meiji Restoration and challenged traditional kabuki conventions with modern themes and naturalistic performance styles. Although shinpa reintroduced women to the stage, early productions still relied heavily on male performers in female roles. Actors such as Ii Yōhō, Kawai Takeo, Takata Minoru, and Fujisawa Asajirō leveraged their outsider status to cultivate a reformist, modernist image, one subtly different from that of classical kabuki stars. Their participation in the Misono campaign provided a double benefit: it granted Itōkochōen a progressive edge while simultaneously boosting the cultural credibility of shinpa actors at a time when the genre was vying for recognition within Japan’s theatrical hierarchy.
If Shikan’s medicalized narrative introduced the dangers of lead through the lens of personal crisis, Makeup Conversations shifted toward prescriptive, habitual advice on skincare and beauty. Each column, serialized in newspapers and framed as candid conversations with beloved actors, fused product endorsement with aesthetic instruction and emotional intimacy. Unlike Edo-period oshiroi advertisements, which depicted actors in full stage makeup and relied on their images functioning as aspirational models for women to copy, Misono’s campaign foregrounded the actors’ offstage selves. This marked a significant shift in spokesperson strategy. Since the Edo period, kabuki actors had operated within a passive endorsement model: their appearance alone had functioned as the product, generating imitation without requiring any explanation of technique. The Makeup Conversations called for a different kind of spokesperson: one who could deliver active instruction rather than simply serve as an image to be copied. Sustaining that model was reinforced by the removal of the very visual marker—the stage makeup—that had defined the earlier, imitation-based endorsement. An actor photographed in full stage powder would still register as the aspirational image consumers were meant to copy, undermining his credibility as an independent source of guidance; it would also have directly contradicted the substance of the advice itself.
This shift carried a cost as well as a function. On stage, oshiroi made an onnagata visually legible as an onnagata, marking the embodied mastery of femininity from which his authority on beauty derived. The campaign’s instructional authority thus depended on a paradox: it drew its weight from actors’ historical identity as embodiments of feminine ideals, while its visual strategy required erasing the very marker that made that identity visible. This visual strategy was not unique to Itōkochōen’s marketing. Maki Isaka has documented a parallel shift within kabuki itself during the Meiji period: as onnagata came to hold institutional authority once reserved for male-role actors, and as the emergence of actresses made “passing as a woman” an inadequate basis for claiming feminine authority, onnagata increasingly required their offstage masculinity to be unambiguous, even as their onstage femininity was elevated as a superior, distinctly artistic achievement.Footnote 63
The distinctiveness of this arrangement becomes clearer when Itōkochōen is compared with other firms that similarly recruited male authorities to speak on beauty. One of Itōkochōen’s competitors, Club Cosmetics, turned to elite men—nobleman Matsui Yasuyoshi, politicians Kuroda Nagashige and Kametarō Hayashida, and writer Murai Gensai—for endorsement.Footnote 64 This choice carried a liability that kabuki actors largely avoided. As Jason Karlin has shown, elite men in late Meiji Japan were already objects of suspicion for their relationship to appearance and self-fashioning: critics lampooned bureaucrats and politicians as vain, effeminate “high-collar gentlemen,” accusing them of attending to their looks “more than women” and privileging imported fashion over substance and national character.Footnote 65 Kabuki actors occupied a different position. Their use of cosmetics was understood as a professional practice rather than personal self-fashioning, allowing them to claim an embodied expertise in beauty without necessarily compromising their offstage masculinity. Itōkochōen’s choice of spokesmen therefore mattered not simply because they were male celebrities, but because theatrical practice gave their cosmetic authority a culturally legible basis.
Sawamura Sōjūrō’s column offers a clear example of this shift from aspirational image to active instruction. Advising women against fully whitening the face, Sawamura, an onnagata who had spent his career painting his face white, warned that traditional methods, applied with “incomplete” or “outdated” cosmetics, could mask the skin’s natural complexion, and reframed beauty as the enhancement of one’s natural features rather than their concealment. He championed instead more “advanced” techniques relying on modern, effective cosmetic products. Drawing on his experience with stage makeup and assuming the role of expert, he offered detailed instruction: “To apply, take a bit of Misono Tsubomi in the palm, apply from the neck to the face, and gently wipe with a soft cloth. Then, using a brush, spread the cream-based Misono Powder evenly. If the cream powder appears too thick, dilute it with Misono Setting Water until you reach the desired look.”Footnote 66 The column not only promoted a three-step routine, but also redefined beauty as a technical process, achievable through discipline and product knowledge.
This instructional tone, blending medicalized concern with expert authority, is equally evident in a column addressed to “women with rough skin,” attributed to Nakamura Ganjirō I. (Figure 4) Speaking in a protective, prescriptive tone, Ganjirō offers a regimen for winter skincare, warning of complexions caused by seasonal dryness. His recommended sequence includes cleansing the face with Misono Tachibana, applying Shiki no Hana to maintain moisture, and sealing with Toki-mizu. He assures readers that this routine not only improves one’s appearance but also prevents frostbite, acne, insect bites, and even heals wounds: “I use this without fail,” he affirms, modeling product loyalty and ideal consumer behavior.Footnote 67
A Makeup Conversations with Famous Actors column featuring kabuki actors Nakamura Ganjirō and Onoe Kikugorō V offering advice on makeup and skincare. January 23, 1909, Yomiuri Shimbun.
Figure 4. Long description
A monochrome newspaper advertisement from the Meiji era.
At the top center is a large, open folding fan (sensu) decorated with stylized floral patterns and large calligraphic characters. A decorative cord with tassels is tied to the fan's pivot point.
To the right of the fan, vertical text identifies the product as Otowagiku oshiroi and mentions the actor Onoe Kikugorō V.
To the left of the fan, a bold vertical heading proclaims the product as the world's best quality face powder.
The bottom half of the advertisement is divided into several sections of dense vertical Japanese text.
On the right side of the lower section, the text describes the special efficacy of the product and warns of the dangers of lead poisoning from traditional cosmetics.
The center-left lower section contains a testimonial or detailed explanation of the product's benefits for maintaining a beautiful complexion.
At the far left and bottom, there are pricing tables for small, medium, and large bottles of the face powder, along with the name and address of the manufacturer, Shūzentō Shōten, located in Tokyo.
Taken together, these examples show how Itōkochōen resolved a specific credibility problem by repurposing an existing cultural figure rather than replacing it. Instruction, unlike imitation, could sell not just a single product but an entire regimen: Sawamura’s three-step application and Ganjirō’s cleanse-moisture-seal routine asked consumers to adopt an ongoing daily practice across Misono’s full product line. Kabuki actors were unusually well suited to this granular instruction because cosmetics were part of their professional expertise, allowing them to explain application methods, product sequences, and daily routines in ways elite endorsers could not replicate. This combination of occupational expertise and a shift away from the imitation-based endorsement model allowed Itōkochōen to reposition its actors from aspirational models to credentialed instructors. The legitimacy initially built around rescuing women from lead poisoning could thus be redirected toward a different commercial end: cultivating habitual consumption across an expanding line of branded products.
Actors’ authority also extended beyond gendered performance to national and racial expertise. As Japan became increasingly inundated with Western goods during the Meiji period, both the government and private industry emphasized the superiority of domestic products. Beauty companies echoed this priority by arguing that Western cosmetics were physiologically unsuited for Japanese skin. Ichimura Uzaemon XV’s column, written in December 1908, criticized the uncritical use of imported powders: “Nowadays, many people use Western powders to achieve a Western-style look, but Westerners belong to the white race. In contrast, Japanese skin has a distinctive yellowish undertone characteristic of our ethnicity. Applying Western makeup techniques directly makes the face look unnatural, causing the complexion to appear uneven.”Footnote 68 Uzaemon’s authority lay not only in his knowledge of cosmetics but in his cultural positioning as a Japanese expert advising Japanese women. He then offered a localized corrective: a Western-style look modified to suit Japanese skin and achieved through Misono products.
Ichikawa Sadanji II offered a similar message through the lens of hair care. Known for his internationalism and interest in foreign theater, Sadanji drew on personal experiences to critique imported products: “In the past, when I performed abroad, I used only imported oils. But I found their scents to be overpowering and unsuitable for Japanese people.” Misono’s oils, by contrast, had a gentle fragrance “that suits the Japanese temperament” and preserved natural black hair, unlike Western oils that supposedly created a reddish hue. Sadanji’s column framed Misono not only as scientifically superior, but as morally and racially appropriate: “Japanese products are best suited for Japanese people.”Footnote 69
In this context, kabuki actors served not merely as endorsers but as participants in a broader Meiji-Taishō-era project of shaping modern womanhood through hygiene, aesthetic judgment, and regulated consumption. While framed as helpful guidance, the columns functioned as instruments of soft discipline, naturalizing a gendered hierarchy of knowledge in which men taught, and women learned. In doing so, Misono also completed a transformation begun with the removal of the actors’ stage makeup: kabuki actors, once venerated as visible embodiments of feminine ideals, now stood before readers as their instructors: their authority intact, even as its visual source had been deliberately erased.
Keshō Nikki
In 1911, Itōkochōen’s marketing team concluded its booklet series with the publication of a Keshō Nikki (Makeup Diary), a fifty-page promotional booklet that distilled the company’s strategy into a portable, interactive format. Building on the momentum of the “Make-Up Discussions” newspaper campaign, Keshō Nikki featured short reflections and beauty tips from thirty-six well-known male actors—spanning classical kabuki and the emerging shingeki (new theater) stage—on topics such as lead-free cosmetics, Western makeup, perfume, and the value of natural aesthetics.Footnote 70 Each entry was followed by a lined page that invited readers to jot down their routines, impressions, and reflections. Positioned as both an instructive manual and personal companion, Keshō Nikki promised, “a marvelous guide to perfecting your look” through the “firsthand experiences” of actors “already well known to the public.”Footnote 71 (Figure 5)
A page from Keshō Nikki (1911) featuring Nakamura Shibajaku IV on the left and Nakamura Shikan V (formerly known as Nakamura Fukusuke IV) on the right. Author’s personal collection.
Figure 5. Long description
A wide, horizontal newspaper clipping from the Yomiuri Shimbun dated January 23, 1909. The layout is divided into two primary sections corresponding to the two actors.
On the right side, a rectangular portrait shows Nakamura Ganjirō in a dark kimono. To his right is the main vertical title of the column. To his left and above him are dense columns of vertical Japanese text providing his advice on skincare for those with oily skin.
On the left side, a second rectangular portrait shows Onoe Kikugorō V in a Western-style suit and tie. He is flanked by similar columns of vertical text detailing his specific makeup and skincare recommendations.
The text is printed in a traditional serif typeface with furigana (phonetic aids) next to many kanji characters. The overall composition is a dense arrangement of information typical of Meiji-era journalism, with the portraits serving as the focal points for each actor's testimonial.
Keshō Nikki invited women to participate actively in their own cosmetic self-improvement regime, illustrating Itōkochōen’s ability to deepen consumer engagement while diversifying its marketing across media platforms. More than just a print advertisement, the diary format transformed the company’s beauty pedagogy into a tactile, user-driven experience. Yet this participatory gesture came with limits. The booklet reflected the company’s underlying belief—explicitly articulated by the founder, Itō Sakae—that women lacked a public tradition of transmitting knowledge about cosmetics and were therefore unsuited to instruct others. Echoing the form of hygiene manuals, etiquette guides, and school notebooks increasingly circulated in Meiji Japan, Keshō Nikki advanced a vision of cosmetics as a civic practice that women could learn, internalize, and perform but not define, inviting them to see themselves as students of modern beauty, while obscuring the existence of their own lived and inherited beauty practices.
Conclusion
The Misono campaign represents a brief but pivotal moment in the history of Japan’s modern beauty industry. Amid a growing public panic over lead poisoning, Itōkochōen did more than produce the country’s first certified lead-free oshiroi; it reshaped how cosmetics were marketed, taught, and trusted. By mobilizing kabuki actors as cultural intermediaries, the company translated theatrical expertise—and, in some cases, personal suffering, as with Nakamura Fukusuke—into persuasive public health messaging. In doing so, it also shifted authority over cosmetic authenticity away from traditional guild producers and toward celebrity testimony, scientific authentication, and imperial association. Through serialized advertorials, Itōkochōen fused editorial trust, celebrity endorsement, and hygienic reform into a new model of commercial communication.
This strategy was more than innovative marketing; it was a historically contingent solution to a credibility crisis. Kabuki actors’ suitability for this role rested on more than the absence of recognized female authority in the public sphere. Onnagata’s cultural authority over feminine beauty predated the Meiji crisis by more than a century, resting on their mastery of an ideal rather than mere access to a vacant public role. As actresses emerged as a professional alternative during the Meiji period, onnagata actively reasserted this authority by presenting themselves as embodying an ideal femininity beyond what any woman could naturally attain. Itōkochōen’s testimonial campaign drew directly on this claim, positioning actors as instructors whose feminine expertise was, by the actor’s own account, superior to women’s untrained, ordinary experience of their own bodies.
This arrangement was short-lived. By the Taishō era, shifting ideals of masculinity and the growing legitimacy of actresses as public figures rendered male beauty guidance increasingly anachronistic.Footnote 72 What changed was not the presence of women as beauty consumers, but who could credibly define and communicate modern beauty standards. Where Itōkochōen’s campaign positioned male actors as the authors of beauty instruction and women as its recipients, the company’s promotional culture increasingly placed women themselves at the center of cosmetic practice. This transformation was visible by 1923, when Itōkochōen organized a photography competition on the theme of makeup, publishing three hundred winning entries in Misono no Omokage (Glimpses of Misono).Footnote 73 Photographs of women applying cosmetics made female cosmetic practice itself the object of material representation. Two decades after Misono had enlisted male performers to teach women about makeup, women themselves had moved to the center of its visual beauty culture.
Moreover, as Japan’s beauty culture increasingly converged with Western standards, Itōkochōen operated within a changing market in which theatrical cosmetics became codified as stylized and specialized, while everyday cosmetics moved toward natural colors and complexions. In this transitional landscape, Itōkochōen promoted lead-free formulations as both safe and aesthetically authentic, encouraging consumers to evaluate powders not simply by appearance and performance but also by composition, safety, and scientific credibility. Firms such as Shiseidō and Club Cosmetics participated in this broader transformation, promoting skin-toned powders and ideas of natural complexion while adopting new forms of commercial persuasion increasingly detached from theatrical authority. What had once been continuous between stage and society became sharply divided, underscoring how modern beauty culture redefined both gender and genre.
The rise and retreat of kabuki actors as beauty influencers reveals the strategic agility of companies like Itōkochōen in moments of cultural volatility that characterized the Meiji period. Confronted with a health crisis and a vacuum of trust, the company offered not only a safer product but a new model—one that merged commerce, care, and performance. This case underscores how enterprise responded to a crisis not simply with technological innovation but with new cultural strategies of persuasion. In Japan, testimonial marketing developed along distinctively local logics, leveraging male performers rather than actresses as in Western contexts, and translating medical discourse into a civic pedagogy. In doing so, Itōkochōen illuminates how private enterprise could convert cultural crisis into a commercial opportunity, expanding our understanding of the entanglement of business, public health, and consumer trust in creating modern markets.
Open access
