I’ve been reading through some oral histories of people who grew up around Aala Park in downtown Honolulu as part of a little project I’m committed to.

I thought this description of early 20th century advertising by Japanese merchants was quite interesting. A social media approach long before the advent of online social media.

This is a brief excerpt of an interview with Robert Sato, whose father started in business with a hat cleaning shop in 1913, and later founded Sato Clothiers, which was a well-known local store until it closed for good in 1995.

Sato was asked whether his father’s store did any advertising, and Sato described something they called “kijikoku,” a form of advertising that they placed in Honolulu’s Japanese newspapers.

“Kiji” is gossip, Sato said, and their advertising went into a gossip section in the newspaper. Readers would look for the little gossip items and their subtle mentions of products and services for sale.

Kijikoku is an advertisement whereby he would write out a story about different things, and then paid for the space. And then, it was advertised, but he was put up in a gossip section. This, kiji is gossip. A gossip section was set aside for these people, and they paid for the space, and wrote their own kiji, or news, about—and then, at the end of the kiji was mentioned about some merchandise, you know. And it was the one way of advertising too. It’s not so much a display as such that you know of today.

Q: And what would they write in that kiji, that article?

Well, they’ll write the day, happening of the day, for instance, or something about, oh, everyday life. And you know, if you see your name in the paper, you like to read about it. So he got hold of a lot of articles that he thought was, would be interesting to read, and then mentioned about, you know, his merchandise.

For instance, he probably said, well, you know, “I heard that he is going back to Japan today, and then he took the so-and-so ship,” and in the end, “he wore his Panama hat.” And, oh, you know, he played up his clothing, and then, “He looked nice and when he landed,” and things like that. This is a gossip type of advertising. But that form of advertising very-well, became popular. They like it. The newspaper people like it because there is somebody writing the article, you see, and then they’ll insert it in a very small, little area, but people look forward to read that. It’s a gossip, really. And it was a subtle way of advertising your store or your goods. And then you got to know who’s writing it, you know, my father wrote it as Sato Taichi, you know, he wrote at the end. It said that he was the guy that wrote it, so people used to inquire about it.

Sounds a lot like the use of social media by today’s entrepreneurs, doesn’t it?