# A traffic officer in silhouette: a 1954 safety poster for Japan

A Japanese and English traffic-safety poster filed with U.S. Information Agency posters distributed in Asia, catalog date 29 June 1954. A split-colour silhouette of a uniformed traffic officer stands on a striped base before a gear, over the words "WATCH TRAFFIC SIGNALS" and a Japanese line the archive renders as "Every week is Safety Week" (NAID 5730071).

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      Watch Traffic Signals, Traffic Safety (Japanese and English poster distributed in Japan)

      A traffic officer in silhouette: a 1954 safety poster for Japan
      A 1954 Japanese-English poster from the USIA's Asian files: a traffic officer in silhouette and "WATCH TRAFFIC SIGNALS." No sender printed. NAID 5730071.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Plain folks
      DateJune 29, 1954Made byU.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia seriesMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeEisenhower AdministrationNARANAID 5730071; Record Group 306SourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work; NARA RG 306) U.S. Information Agency / Department of State, June 29, 1954. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 5730071, 306-PPA-172).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A Japanese and English traffic-safety poster filed with U.S. Information Agency posters distributed in Asia, catalog date 29 June 1954. A split-colour silhouette of a uniformed traffic officer stands on a striped base before a gear, over the words "WATCH TRAFFIC SIGNALS" and a Japanese line the archive renders as "Every week is Safety Week" (NAID 5730071).

## One rule, no argument

The figure is a traffic officer, drawn as a split-colour silhouette with one arm pointing sideways and the other raised. He stands on a striped base, and a gear sits behind him. The archive's description stops there. The text is five short lines, four in Japanese and one in English.

交通安全

見よ

信号

毎週が安全週間

WATCH TRAFFIC SIGNALS

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5730071, local id 306-PPA-172.

In the archive's machine translation, unchecked by a fluent reader, the Japanese reads "Traffic safety," "Look (heed)," "Signal" and "Every week is Safety Week." The English line needs no translation and repeats the instruction.

## In the agency's file

The National Archives files the poster in Record Group 306 with the series Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, under the U.S. Information Agency and its predecessor, the State Department's International Information and Educational Exchange Program. The catalog date is 29 June 1954. FRAME classes the source as blurred: nothing on the sheet names who printed it. It records the purpose as "Warn or inform" and the themes as health, and home front.

## Civic advice from an unnamed sender

FRAME's tag is plain folks, and its note calls the sheet a direct instruction with no argument: an everyday civic figure teaches a rule of conduct. That is about as mild as messaging gets.

The interest of the sheet is in what it is doing in this file at all. An American information agency's Asian poster series, a series that elsewhere carried Cold War arguments, also held a road-safety notice for Japan with no American name on it. The record does not say why the agency printed it or who displayed it. It shows only that civic advice and political persuasion sat in the same series, which is worth knowing when reading either kind.

The same Asian files hold a Japanese-language U.N. Day poster on cattle vaccine and a Japanese-language sheet for the Ryukyus on tuna long-lining. The political posters in the program are on the USIA posters abroad hub.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Watch Traffic Signals, Traffic Safety (Japanese and English poster distributed in Japan). U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program). Catalog date June 29, 1954.

- U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, NAID 5730071, 306-PPA-172, catalog record, retrieved by the archive October 3, 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/watch-traffic-signals-traffic-safety-japanese-1954/