Paragon Chikuonki Advertisement – Nippon Shinbun
This advertisement for the Paragon Chikuonki (Gramophone Paragon), published in the Nippon Shinbun—a Japanese-language newspaper in São Paulo, Brazil—offers a striking example of early 20th-century cultural and typographic exchange between Japan and Latin America.
The ad was created by and for the Japanese immigrant community in Brazil, which by the 1930s had grown into one of the largest Japanese diasporas in the world. It uses zuan moji, a Japanese decorative type style that blends calligraphic elegance with modern commercial clarity, reflecting both the cultural heritage of its readers and the emerging design trends of the era.
This advertisement blends traditional Japanese design with Latin American commercial aesthetics and reflects the cultural exchange within immigrant communities in early 20th-century Brazil.