International Exchange Exhibition “Tokyo, Birth of a Modern City (Prints from the 1920s-1930s from the Edo-Tokyo Museum)” [held at The Japan Cultural Institute in Paris]

The second collection exhibition during the Tokyo Metropolitan Edo-Tokyo Museum’s temporary closure, “Tokyo, Birth of a Modern City (Prints from the 1920s-1930s from the Edo-Tokyo Museum),” will be held in collaboration with and at the Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris (Paris, France). The first of these exhibitions was held in 2022 under the name “Un bestiaire japonais – Vivre avec les animaux à Edo-Tokyo (XVIIIe-XIXesiècle)” (English title: “Ikimono: Life with Animals in Edo Tokyo”).

Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868 (the first year of the Meiji Era), the city of Edo underwent rapid modernization, transforming into what we know as Tokyo today. When the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 swept away the old townscapes, with its vestiges of the past, the city was further transformed into one of steel and concrete, particularly in the central areas.
This exhibition will spotlight the 1930s as an era of great change, in which various woodblock printmakers created prints of urban landscapes in the wake of the unprecedented disaster that was the Great Kanto Earthquake, and the recovery from it. There was a reevaluation of the traditional purpose of ukiyo-e prints, which was to depict the scenery and customs of the period, and many printmakers turned their attention to the city’s transformation. The woodblock prints express both the sense of euphoria that came from the prospect of change, as well as the melancholy of losing the vestiges of the past, in a richly emotional and sensitive manner.
This exhibition will present this collection of modern woodblock prints of the Tokyo scenery in Paris—the site of numerous past exhibitions of ukiyo-e prints. We hope that this exhibition will provide an opportunity for mutual reflection on the cities of Paris and Tokyo, generate interest in modern Japanese woodblock prints, and deepen people’s understanding of the city of Tokyo.