Performing Beauty: Itōkochōen, Kabuki Actors, and the Marketing of Lead-Free Cosmetics in Meiji Japan

This article examines how a consumer health crisis transformed cosmetics marketing in Japan’s emerging beauty industry. By the late nineteenth century, the dangers of lead-based oshiroi (white face powder) were widely recognized, particularly among kabuki actors who suffered visibly from occupational poisoning. Although manufacturers experimented with lead-free alternatives, contemporary observers repeatedly judged them inferior to conventional powders, revealing that safer cosmetics required not only scientific innovation but an acceptable substitute for an established and culturally desirable product. Itōkochōen sought to resolve this problem with Misono Oshiroi, a lead-free formulation distinguished by scientific authentication, imperial association, and an ambitious actor-centered marketing campaign. Through serialized advertorials, promotional booklets, and newspaper campaigns, kabuki actors drew on their professional expertise in cosmetics and firsthand experience of poisoning to translate medical beauty knowledge into practical instruction. The campaign reconfigured an Edo-period relationship between kabuki and commercial beauty for a market increasingly organized around hygiene, scientific expertise, and female consumption. In doing so, Itōkochōen demonstrates how Japanese firms modernized established commodities by combining product innovation with culturally specific forms of commercial persuasion.