Sometimes the Story Behind an Object Begins After You Sell It
Last night, I thought I was delivering a Jintan poster. But I came back with another story...
For almost two years, Sree kept telling me one thing.
“You should start making videos.”
Whenever I read something interesting in a book or an article, I would end up telling him the whole story. An old artefact, a historical character, an ancient civilisation, a painting, an artist, or some strange little connection I had discovered.
And he would always say, “You should tell these stories to people. They should know about you and what you know.”
I knew he was right. But actually doing it was scary. Somehow, the thought of “making content” made me want to disappear.
So I kept postponing it.
Marketing has always been the hardest part for me. I am much more comfortable researching, writing and making things than sitting in front of a camera and talking.
Then the Jintan advertisement came into my hands.
And for some reason, this one was different.
There was so much history hiding inside this one little advertisement that I couldn’t keep it to myself. I wanted to tell people about it.
So I finally did something I had been avoiding for almost two years.
I made my first video for Purathanam.
And surprisingly, it didn’t feel like marketing. It felt like telling someone a story.
I sat in front of the camera and recorded the journey of Jintan, a Japanese brand that had reached India by the early 20th century.
A few months later, a Mumbai-based architect bought it.
And this brought me to another part of running Purathanam that I don’t think people see.
The hardest part, for me, is not receiving an order. It is sending the piece away.
I’ve slowly standardised the operations over the years, so once an order comes in, everything is quite smooth.
But when a parcel leaves my hands, I start worrying.
What happens to it on the way?
Who is handling it?
Will it be kept safely?
To the person carrying it, it is just another parcel.
But I know what is inside.
I know how old it is. I know where it came from. I know the research behind it. And sometimes I know there are all one of a kind and it would be difficult even to find a similar one.
For outstation orders, I don’t really have a choice. I pack everything as carefully as I can and send it.
And the moment it reaches the customer and I get a message saying, “It’s beautiful. I loved it,” is when I finally breathe.
But when a customer is in Mumbai, I prefer to deliver the pieces myself.
I have an auto driver I trust, and he has helped me with deliveries before. But that day, he wasn’t available.
I tried Porter.
I tried Uber Auto.
But somehow my heart just wouldn’t let me send this particular piece with a stranger.
So I decided to go myself.
And I’m really glad I did.
Because my customers are such an interesting bunch. Some are architects. Some are art lovers. Some are interior designers. Some are collectors. Some are connected to museums.
And almost every time I meet them, I come away with something.
A story.
A reference.
A book recommendation.
A new piece of information.
This time, the person who bought the Jintan canvas was an architect.
(Jintan Ad. Poster on Canvas from Purathanam Collection)
I was so glad that this Jintan advertisement was going into the beautiful home of two architects.
I entered the house like a kid entering a chocolate factory.
They had filled their home with beautiful art pieces from different parts of the world, and I was dying to stay and look at everything. But it was already quite late, and I was too shy to linger.
So I quickly left.
But before I did, over a glass of water, we had a small chat.
And he shared a little piece of Jintan history that I didn’t know.
He even sent me 2 links to read.
I didn’t just deliver a Jintan advertisement that evening.
I came back with another story about Jintan that I had never heard before.
Thank goodness I decided to go and deliver it myself.
If I hadn’t, I would have missed this beautiful piece of history. And that is how this article came to be. All because I decided to deliver a Jintan poster myself.
My customer knew something I didn’t
Later, I opened the link he had shared with me.
And went down another Jintan rabbit hole.
This time, the story took me to China and then back to India.
The little silver pill that travelled across Asia
Jintan began in Osaka in 1905, when Morishita Hiroshi launched a small, silver-coated pill intended to be a convenient medicine that people could carry with them.
(Morishita Hiroshi and family )
(Jintan antique metal case, and original silver-coated pills.)
The idea itself had come to him years earlier, after he had seen people in Taiwan using traditional pills while he was serving there during the First Sino-Japanese War.
But Jintan was never really just about the medicine.
The more I read, the more I realised that Morishita understood something very early: people had to remember a brand before they could buy it.
And Jintan became extraordinarily good at making itself memorable.
The company invested heavily in newspaper advertisements, outdoor signs, billboards and even enormous illuminated advertising towers. Within just two years of its launch, Jintan had become Japan’s best-selling patent medicine.
Then it began travelling.
In 1907, Morishita created an export department, and China became one of its earliest major overseas markets. By 1908, Jintan advertisements were appearing in Chinese newspapers, while the company had established a distribution network reaching thousands of postal agencies across China.
And everywhere Jintan went, that distinctive man followed.
The famous Jintan trademark showed a stern-looking Meiji-era gentleman wearing a formal hat and an enormous moustache.
He became so recognisable in China that the image itself began influencing fashion.
By the 1920s, Chinese men were even growing moustaches inspired by the Jintan man, and the expression “Jintan beard” survived in Chinese usage.
But China is where the story takes a much darker and more mysterious turn.
During the 1930s, rumours began circulating that Jintan advertisements placed in remote parts of China were being used by Japanese spies as secret signals.
According to a 1936 Chinese intelligence report, advertisements were allegedly being put up in isolated locations to help communicate information about roads and movement.
The theory was that the direction of the Jintan man’s moustache could indicate whether a road was safe, blocked, or a dead end.
It makes for an extraordinary story.
But it is important to say that this remains a historical allegation rather than an established fact. Even the surviving account acknowledges that it is difficult to determine whether the supposed Jintan code was ever actually used.
What we do know is that after the Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, the Chinese government ordered Jintan advertisements to be removed. The brand had become associated with Japanese imperialism and cultural intrusion.
And then there is the part of the Jintan story that I found particularly fascinating.
When Jintan Reached India
Jintan had reached British India by the years before the First World War.
Japanese goods were becoming increasingly visible in Indian markets, and Japan itself had begun to fascinate many educated Indians, especially after Japan’s remarkable victory over Russia in 1905.
Japanese patent medicines, including Jintan, found a market in India.
But Jintan did something clever.
It adapted.
The advertising created for a Japanese audience was not simply reproduced in India. Jintan’s imagery was altered to speak to Indian consumers.
Japanese women in kimono were replaced with sari-clad Indian women. Snowy landscapes became tropical gardens. Indian scripts and the names of local importers appeared alongside the Japanese branding.
Some of the imagery was even drawn from the visual world of Raja Ravi Varma and the Ravi Varma Press.
One surviving Jintan advertisement used an image of Mohini, one of Ravi Varma’s famous female figures.
And suddenly, this little Japanese brand becomes part of a much larger story, one about trade, advertising, colonial India, Japanese modernity and the way images travelled across Asia and changed as they travelled.
The Jintan company itself records another fascinating detail in its history: a Bombay branch was opened in 1912 through a partnership with Chaubarl & Co.
So when I look at the Jintan advertisement that came through Purathanam, I no longer see just an old Japanese advertisement.
I see an object that belongs to a much larger Asian journey.
It began in Osaka.
It travelled through China.
It reached British India.
And somewhere along the way, the Japanese brand had to learn how to speak to Indian eyes.
And that is what I find so wonderful about old objects.
You think you have finished their story.
And then someone else comes along and adds another chapter.
Months back, this Jintan advertisement inspired me. I spent so much time researching how it could have reached India, and it actually pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me make my first video.
Then it found a new home.
And because I was too nervous to send it with a delivery person, I went to deliver it myself.
And because I went there myself, I met the person who bought it.
And because we started talking, they told me another story.
And because of that story, I went home and started researching Jintan all over again.
Isn’t that wonderful?
One little advertisement.
So many unexpected journeys.
Maybe this is what I love about Purathanam.
I don’t think I am very good at selling things.
But give me an old object with a story, and I will happily spend hours trying to understand it.
And perhaps that is what I should have been doing all along.
Not marketing.
Just telling stories.
If you’d like to explore the Japan–India connection further click here. I had written earlier about Japan — its ancient history, its cultural journey, and how Japan’s relationship with India evolved during the colonial period.
(Read: Japan — From Ancient Civilisation to Colonial India)
The Jintan advertisement from Purathanam Collection
And if you would like to bring a little piece of this story home, the Jintan advertisement is now part of a private collection in Mumbai.
If you’d like to bring a little piece of this story home, you can explore and buy the antique Jintan advertisement poster from the Purathanam collection. Only two posters remain.
References
The 2 links shared by my customer;