Success in Life Sugoroku (Shusse sugoroku)

Success in Life (出世双六, Shusse sugoroku) is a New Year sugoroku board game designed by Takabatake Kashō and produced in 1924 (Taishō 13) as a supplement to a popular magazine, now preserved in the collection of the Edo-Tokyo Museum (Sumida, Tokyo). Sugoroku were a major genre of Japanese illustrated print throughout the Edo and Meiji periods and survived into the Taishō and early Shōwa years as supplements to magazines such as Shōjo kurabu and Shōnen kurabu, where they served as both entertainment and a vehicle for didactic narratives about life trajectories. The Success in Life subgenre (shusse sugoroku) charted a player's progress through various social stations toward a successful career, and Kashō's design populates this framework with his characteristic figure types — modern boys, modern girls, schoolgirls in sailor uniforms — distributed across the board's path. The work is an important document of Kashō's range beyond magazine covers and of the integration of his style into the popular print culture of the period.