Brutus, May 1, 1984

The May 1, 1984 issue of Brutus, a bi-weekly men’s lifestyle magazine launched by Magazine House in 1980, features a cover story entitled “What’s What? Brutus’ Information Vitamins: Contemporary Trends from A to Z.” The sixty-three “information vitamins” are the consumer trends most relevant to the Brutus reader, a design-conscious, professional Tokyo man. Kazuhisa Ashibe’s cover illustration depicts an inground pool with a television placed on a diving board, perhaps as a postmodern flourish acknowledging contemporary critiques of the pervasiveness of mass media. Similarly out of place, an orange remote control faces the reader, but its numbers are replaced by Roman letters. The “P” button on the device is highlighted, corresponding to the image displayed on the television screen: the first “information vitamin” under the letter “P” is Phoenix Follies, a hyper-sexualized line of female model figurines. Following the didactic approach of Japanese lifestyle magazines, Brutus presents just what the reader needs to navigate the “flood of information and things” endemic to Japan’s “ultra-consumer society.” 

The Brutus logo, inscribed prominently at top of the illustration in bright red, was designed by Seiichi Horiuchi, who also supervised the publication’s editorial design. The magazine’s namesake is Popeye’s nemesis Brutus from E.C. Segar’s King Features comic, which was licensed to Magazine House in Japan. Horiuchi’s logo design directly references Brutus, with the letterforms terminating in broken lines that resemble the spiked edge of the character’s beard. Departing from its sister publication Popeye, advertised as a young, cheerful “magazine for city boys,” the bold, confrontational design, upscale “advertorials” and explicit sexuality of Brutus reflects the mature, edgy masculinity of the working man.

Marilyn Ivy, “Critical Texts, Mass Artifacts: The Consumption of Knowledge in Postmodern Japan,” in Postmodernism and Japan, ed. H.D. Harootunian and M. Miyoshi, 21-46 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989).

Hui-Ying Kerr, “Envisioning the Bubble: Creating and Consuming Lifestyles Through Magazines in the Culture of the Japanese Bubble Economy (1986-1991),” (PhD diss., Royal College of Art, 2017).

Komori Masaki, “Wakamono zasshi to 1970-nendai nihon ni okeru ‘amerikanaizēshon’ no henyō: ‘takarajima’, ‘Made in U.S.A. catalog’, ‘popai’, and ‘burūtasu’ o jirei ni [Japanese Youth Magazines and the Transformation of Americanization in the 1970s: Takarajima, Made in U.S.A. catalog, Popeye, and Brutus],” Shuppan kenkyū [Journal of the Japan Society of Publishing Studies] 42 (March 2012): 47-68.

Korona bukkusu henshūbuhen, Horiuchi seiichi tabi to ehon to dezain to [Horiuchi Seiichi: Travels, Picture Books and Design] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2009).