“Goddess on Horseback / Woman Commanding Five White Horses - Osaka Shōsen” – Original Pre‑War Japanese Shipping Advertising Poster, 1918 (Taishō 7), Ultra Rare, Museum‑Grade Early Multicolour Offset Lithograph by Machida Ryūyō (c. 96.5 × 62.5 cm)
An extraordinary, ultra-rare original advertising poster commissioned by Ōsaka Shōsen Kabushiki Kaisha — the Osaka Mercantile Steamship Company and a principal predecessor of today’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines. Designed by the important early commercial artist and lithographic specialist Machida Ryūyō (町田隆要, 1871–1955), this monumental composition presents an idealised female figure commanding five horses as they charge through the shallows beneath the company’s enormous red-and-white standard.
The University of Southern California’s Japanese Poster Collection dates the design to 1918, while the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art has catalogued and exhibited it under the title 《大阪商船株式会社（五頭の白馬を御す女性）》 — “Osaka Shōsen Co. (Woman Commanding Five White Horses)” — with the slightly broader date 1918–19. The lower printer’s credit identifies Ichida Offset Printing Co., Ltd. (市田オフセット印刷株式會社), one of the firms associated with the development of sophisticated colour planographic printing in early 20th-century Japan.
Combining Western-style painterly modelling, an archaic Japanese costume, heroic allegory, corporate symbolism and a remarkably detailed international route schedule, this is far more than a transport advertisement. It is a major document of Taishō-period commercial art: an image of Japan’s cultural past harnessed to the speed, ambition and international reach of a modern steamship company. The design has entered major institutional collections and exhibitions, yet original examples remain exceptionally scarce. The present sheet survives in Very Good+ to Excellent condition, retaining remarkably rich colour, its complete route panel, artist’s monogram, red printer’s seal and full lower imprint.
Poster Details
Title: Osaka Shōsen – Woman Commanding Five White Horses / Goddess on Horseback
Japanese Institutional Title: 大阪商船株式会社（五頭の白馬を御す女性）
Alternative English Title: Ōsaka Shōsen Kabushiki Kaisha – Goddess on Horseback
Commissioning Company / Advertiser: Ōsaka Shōsen Kabushiki Kaisha (大阪商船株式會社), commonly translated as Osaka Mercantile Steamship Co., Ltd.
Country / Year: Japan, 1918 (Taishō 7); catalogued by the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art as 1918–19
Artist: Machida Ryūyō (町田隆要, 1871–1955)
Printer: Ichida Offset Printing Co., Ltd. (市田オフセット印刷株式會社), Osaka
Printing Process: Early multicolour lithographic offset printing.
Format: Original pre-war Japanese corporate shipping and route-advertising poster
Original Purpose: Prestige advertising for Osaka Shōsen’s passenger and cargo services, combined with a practical overview of the company’s regular domestic and international routes
Dimensions: Approx. 62.5 × 96.5 cm width × height; approximately 24⅝ × 38 in
Display Orientation: Vertical one-sheet
Condition: Very Good+ to Excellent for its age; unbacked and largely unrestored apart from one small historic washi repair
Description
The composition is among the most spectacular images produced during the formative years of Japanese commercial poster design. Five powerful horses surge diagonally towards the viewer and through a shallow expanse of water, their hooves producing ripples at the bottom of the sheet. The heads and bodies overlap in a tightly compressed formation, filling almost the entire picture plane and creating an extraordinary sense of movement, noise and physical momentum.
Above them rises a young female figure in elaborate historical or mythological dress. Her face is calm and hieratic, contrasting with the explosive movement beneath her. Her long black hair and the ribbons of her costume stream backwards, while a quiver of arrows is visible behind her shoulder. A crescent-shaped ornament crowns her coiffure, and her intricately patterned red, blue, green and cream garments introduce some of the richest colour passages in the design.
USC’s curatorial interpretation describes the figure as a goddess wearing Nara-period-inspired costume, riding or commanding five stallions into the ocean. The Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art uses the more neutral description, “Woman Commanding Five White Horses.” No authoritative source located during the present research securely identifies her as a particular named deity, empress or historical person, and the image is therefore best understood as an idealised allegorical figure rather than assigned a speculative identity.
In her raised hand she carries an enormous red-and-white company flag. Its red bands form a monumental 「大」 — dai or “great” — the traditional emblem used to represent Osaka Shōsen. Rather than functioning merely as a decorative backdrop, the standard sweeps across the upper half of the poster like a sail filled by the wind. The energetic flag, flying hair, reins and ribbons all move in the same direction, binding the figure and horses into a single forward thrust.
USC’s exhibition proposes that the five horses may symbolise the five continents, transforming the group into a metaphor for Japan and Osaka Shōsen entering the global commercial arena. This is a persuasive curatorial reading rather than a confirmed explanation supplied by the artist or company, and it should be treated accordingly. What is indisputable is that the poster deliberately connects an idealised vision of Japan’s ancient cultural authority with a modern company operating an increasingly international network.
At the top, the monumental brown inscription is printed in the pre-war right-to-left order:
大阪商船株式會社
Ōsaka Shōsen Kabushiki Kaisha
At the lower left of the painted image, a small steamship appears on the horizon. This restrained detail is almost overwhelmed by the horses, yet it anchors the allegorical spectacle to the company’s actual business. The charging animals become an imaginative equivalent of the modern steamship: powerful, fast and capable of crossing the sea.
The cream-coloured information panel across the bottom is headed 定期航路一覧 — “List of Regular Routes.” It transforms the sheet from a purely pictorial advertisement into a working corporate and transport document. In addition to a dense grid of routes and sailing frequencies, it records, in period financial numerals, the following company information:
Head Office: Tomishima-chō, Kita-ku, Osaka
Established: May 1884
Capital: ¥50,000,000
Corporate Bonds: ¥5,500,000
Reserves: approximately ¥19,900,000
Fleet: 116 steamships
Total Tonnage: approximately 241,000 tons
The route columns encompass a remarkable network of Japanese coastal and overseas services, including routes associated with Taiwan, China, the South Seas, Bombay, Australia, North and South America and San Francisco, with the frequency of each service printed below. It is this combination of grand allegory and densely specific commercial information that makes the poster so compelling: the heroic upper image promises limitless expansion, while the lower panel supplies the physical ships, destinations and timetables that made the promise real.
At the lower right, the design preserves both a printed artist’s monogram within the image field and the red circular printer’s mark, followed by the period imprint identifying Ichida Offset Printing Co., Ltd. Close inspection of the exact photographed sheet reveals a fine, softly granular printed surface, especially in the sky, flesh, textiles and horses. Subtle layers of grey, ochre, cream and brown model the animals, while stronger crimson, coral, blue-green and jade passages animate the flag and costume. The resulting surface has the depth and tonal variation of a painting rather than the flat, mechanically uniform appearance of a modern digital reproduction.
The poster was almost certainly intended for display in an Osaka Shōsen office, passenger agency, port, ticketing location, commercial premises or travel bureau. Contemporary shipping companies used posters to attract both passengers and freight business, particularly when announcing new routes, ships and international services. Osaka Shōsen’s own historical poster archive confirms that such material was central to the company’s publicity as its network spread from the Seto Inland Sea to worldwide routes.
Rarity
Large Japanese commercial posters of the 1910s were functional, temporary display objects, not fine-art editions intended to be carefully stored. They were pinned, pasted or hung in shipping offices, agencies, stations, ports and shop windows; once schedules, fleet figures or routes changed, they became obsolete. Their substantial size, relatively vulnerable paper and commercial use meant that the overwhelming majority were damaged or discarded.
Therefore, very few survive in this condition, and institutionally recorded original examples are extremely few. USC’s East Asian Library digital collection records at least two separately identified examples, catalogued as rbm-coll3020-01-01 and rbm-coll3020-01-06.
The design was also prominently displayed by the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art in its 2016 exhibition Visit Japan: Tourism Promotion in the 1920s and 1930s, where it was shown alongside Machida Ryūyō’s celebrated Osaka Shōsen poster of the sumo champion Tachiyama. The museum’s exhibition documentation captions this exact design with Machida’s name and the date 1918–19.
It subsequently featured in USC’s digital exhibition Unpinning History: Japanese Posters in the Age of Commercialism, Imperialism, and Modernism, where it was selected to illustrate the rise of tourism, ocean liners, commercialism and Japan’s developing international identity. Its repeated use in institutional displays and design-historical interpretation demonstrates that this is not simply an obscure period advertisement, but one of the recognised canonical images of early Japanese shipping publicity.
The present example compares exceptionally well with the publicly illustrated institutional material. One USC example has a conspicuous area of loss and damage at the upper-left corner; the present poster retains its complete company title, full pictorial composition, route table, signature, printer’s seal and lower imprint.
Original sheets appearing outside institutional collections are extraordinarily uncommon. The numerous modern decorative prints of this image encountered online should not be confused with surviving period posters. A genuine, full-size, unbacked 1918 printing in this state of preservation must be regarded as ultra rare and fully worthy of a serious institutional or advanced private collection.
Condition
Condition: Very Good+ to Excellent for an original poster more than a century old; unbacked and largely unrestored, with one small historic washi repair.
• Colours remain exceptionally strong. The crimson flag, red harnesses and ribbons, blue-green cuffs, patterned costume and soft cream highlights retain remarkable saturation. The more restrained greys, taupes and ochres of the sky and horses remain well balanced, with no significant overall fading apparent.
• The principal image presents beautifully. The woman’s face, hair, costume, flag, all five horses, distant ship, water, route panel, artist’s monogram, printer’s seal and company imprint are complete and clearly legible.
• The poster appears to have been very slightly and neatly trimmed at some point in its history. The reduction is minimal and visually unobtrusive, and the sheet remains extremely close to the recorded period format. No essential image, lettering, route information or production credit has been compromised.
• There is a small historic tear or weakened area in the upper sky, stabilised on the reverse with an old strip of Japanese washi paper. The repair is localized and appears structurally sound.
• Corresponding with that area is a short, discontinuous horizontal group of old black ink marks in the grey sky, situated to the left of the flagpole. Although visible, it occupies an open background area and does not cross the company title, goddess, flag, horses or timetable. It is a relatively minor imperfection within an otherwise exceptionally preserved sheet.
• The edges show light age-related waviness, a few minute nicks and small areas of handling wear, particularly along the top and outer edges. These are modest and entirely consistent with the poster’s age, size and original commercial function.
• The printed surface retains its attractive fine grain, with only subtle handling undulations and very light scattered surface marks visible under close examination. There are no large areas of abrasion, no major colour loss and no visually distracting restoration.
• The verso exhibits even natural age-toning, faint surface and image-related traces and the localized washi reinforcement. The poster is not linen-backed, and no pressure-sensitive adhesive tape or extensive modern conservation is present.
• The circular black and silver objects visible around the perimeter in several photographs are external magnets used to hold the sheet safely in position for photography; they are not holes, repairs or components of the poster.
Considering the vulnerability of large pre-war Japanese advertising sheets — and the visibly compromised state of at least one institutional comparison example — the survival of the present poster in such complete, richly coloured condition is remarkable. It is immediately suitable for archival framing and display.
Historical Significance
Ōsaka Shōsen Kabushiki Kaisha was founded on 1 May 1884, when 55 smaller Osaka shipowners combined their operations. From an initial regional fleet serving the Seto Inland Sea and Kyushu, the company expanded to Korea in 1890, Taiwan in 1896, China shortly afterwards and, following the Russo-Japanese War, to longer-distance international services. It opened routes to Bombay in 1913 and, during the First World War, to South America, Australia and the South Seas.
The figures printed at the foot of this poster make that transformation tangible. In little more than three decades, Osaka Shōsen had become a corporation claiming 116 steamships and approximately 241,000 tons of shipping, with routes spanning the Japanese archipelago and a substantial part of the globe. The poster was therefore not advertising a hypothetical future. It was proclaiming an international network that already existed and placing it within a heroic visual narrative.
Its date is equally significant. Produced at the end of the First World War, it belongs to the moment when Japanese shipping, urban industry and international commerce were expanding rapidly. In the years that followed, railways, steamship companies and government tourism organisations increasingly commissioned sophisticated posters to promote travel and to construct an attractive image of Japan for domestic and overseas audiences. The 2016 Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art exhibition situated this poster at the beginning of precisely that history.
Artistically, the work occupies a fascinating position between fine painting, bijin-ga, Western-style yōga and industrial reproduction. The woman’s softly modelled face and the anatomical treatment of the horses reveal familiarity with Western pictorial realism, yet her costume, frontal serenity and symbolic function draw on Japanese historical imagery. The composition is not static, however: the radical crop, overlapping horses, foreshortened bodies and charging diagonal create a startling modernity.
Machida Ryūyō was especially suited to such a commission. Research into surviving Machida drawings describes him as a rare poster artist who understood both the creation of the original composition and the demanding technical work of translating it into multiple lithographic colour separations. Whereas it was customary for an artist and specialist print technicians to work separately, Machida could reportedly carry a design from the preparatory image to the drawing of the individual lithographic plates, sometimes working with around ten colour components.
His wider reputation is confirmed by the fact that his design for the Matsuzakaya department store won the grand prize in its 1922 advertising-poster competition. The National Diet Library records that judges particularly admired Machida’s composition and colour — qualities already fully evident in this earlier Osaka Shōsen masterpiece.
The poster also belongs to the visual culture of Japanese international expansion and should be understood within that history. USC’s curators interpret the goddess and five charging horses as an image of a culturally ancient but technologically modern Japan advancing into the world market. The five-continent interpretation is compelling but remains an interpretation rather than a documented statement of Machida’s intentions.
This historical complexity is central to the poster’s importance. It simultaneously records the development of Japanese graphic design, the rise of commercial shipping, the emergence of international tourism, the growth of mass advertising and the ideological language through which modern Japan represented itself to the world.
Additional Information
Authenticity: Guaranteed original pre-war Japanese printing issued for Osaka Shōsen; not a later reproduction. The period paper, naturally aged verso, fine planographic print texture, company statistics, route panel, artist’s monogram, Ichida imprint and red printer’s seal correspond to documented institutional examples.
Documentation: USC institutional records identify the design as an Osaka Shōsen advertisement created by Machida Ryūyō, issued in 1918 and printed by Ichida Offset Printing Co., Ltd. The Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art identifies the same composition as 《大阪商船株式会社（五頭の白馬を御す女性）》 and dates it 1918–19.
Known Exhibition History of the Design:
The exact design was exhibited at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, 9 January–28 February 2016, in Visit Japan: Tourism Promotion in the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition was accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published by the museum in 2016, presenting 127 works concerned with Japanese transport, tourism and promotional design.
Known Digital Exhibition and Collection History:
The design is held in at least two separately catalogued examples in the USC Libraries East Asian Library Japanese Poster Collection and was included in USC’s 2020 online exhibition Unpinning History: Japanese Posters in the Age of Commercialism, Imperialism, and Modernism.
Conservation: Given the poster’s strong structural condition, rich original colour and limited localized repair, it should display superbly in a conservation frame using reversible Japanese-paper hinges, an acid-free support and UV-filtering museum acrylic. Any further treatment should be minimal and undertaken only by a qualified paper conservator so that the sheet’s historic character and original surface remain intact.
A genuinely exceptional museum-grade survivor from 1918, combining monumental scale, extraordinary imagery, a major early Japanese commercial artist, an internationally important shipping company and documented institutional recognition. This is a centrepiece for any advanced collection of Japanese graphic design, Taishō-period art, maritime history, early advertising, transport ephemera or pre-war cultural history.
