Kao Soap Woman's Silhouette Advertisement

“The vast amount of innovative design produced for the New Kao campaign and related subsequent campaigns into the 1930s constitutes the company's major contribution to the development of the commercial design field in Japan…Designers wielded a potent cultural weapon when they deployed modernist aesthetics in the mass media, as the new slick styles greatly expanded their expressive possibilities and the images they created connoted innovation as well as ideologies of progressive civilization.”

Weisenfeld, Gennifer, "From Baby's First Bath": Kaō Soap and Modern Japanese Commercial Design." The Art Bulletin, College Art Association, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Sep., 2004), pp. 573-598.