Tokyo, birth of a modern city
Until 1er February 2025 at the Japanese Cultural Center in Paris, 101 bis, quai Jacques Chirac, 75015 Paris.
Edo, the former shogunal capital, became Tokyo in 1868 and modernized rapidly throughout the Meiji era. But in 1923, during the Taishô era, the Great Kantô Earthquake devastated the city. While the last districts that had preserved the atmosphere of yesteryear disappeared, reconstruction would allow Tokyo to accelerate its modernization.
It is this radical transformation of Tokyo into a modern city during the 1920s and 1930s that the new MCJP exhibition reveals.
For the occasion, the Edo-Tokyo Museum lent him a hundred works from its collection: a large number of modern prints rarely exhibited in France, as well as posters, photos and fashion accessories. These prints in varied and innovative styles, signed by the great engravers of the time, oscillate between fascination with these upheavals and nostalgia for the Tokyo of yesteryear.
