Yūsaku Kamekura was born on April 6, 1915, in
Yoshidamachi,
Nishi-Kambara,
Niigata Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from
Nihon University High School in 1933. He took his first paying assignment at 17, when he designed the Japanese edition of
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's
Night Flight. From 1935 to 1937, Kamekura studied at the Institute of New Architecture and Industrial Arts in
Tokyo. In 1938, he began working for
Yōnosuke Natori laying out
Nippon, a multilingual cultural magazine. Natori's training in Germany influenced Kamakura, who became fascinated with the moderns and, eventually, Bauhaus. He was a fan of
Cassandre,
Saint-Exupéry, and
Jean Cocteau. Early on, it was recognized that Kamekura,
Akira Kurosawa, and
Kenzō Tange made up a trio of great Japanese visual artists of the 20th century. In 1951, Kamekura helped found Japan Advertising Artists Club, which was the first group in Japan dedicated to graphic design. They were able to host their first poster exhibition within Tokyo and that ended up catching the publics attention to advertising design. He hosted the World Design Conference in 1960 but was still a trifle ashamed of the level of Japanese design. Convinced that it needed a boost and funding, Kamekura gathered the presidents of powerful corporations to sponsor a cooperative house agency: Nippon Design Center (NDC). The companies included were
Asahi Beer,
Toyota,
Nomura Securities,
Japan Railways, and
Toshiba. After managing the design agency, he left to pursue an independent career. In addition to the Bauhaus, Kamekura was influenced by the work of
Cassandre and Russian
constructivism. John Clifford writes that Kamekura's work "blended the functionality of these modern movements with the lyrical grace of traditional Japanese design," resulting in "a boldly minimal aesthetic that used color, light, geometry, and photography." He was art director or editor for a series of magazines:
Nippon (starting in 1937),
Kaupapu (in 1939), and
Commerce Japan (in 1949). == 1964 Olympics ==