– On September 1, 1923, at 11:58 am, an earthquake struck eastern Japan with devastating force. Tokyo suffered vast damage and loss of life. Attempts to reconstruct the metropolis were complicated by domestic and international economic depression in the late 1920s. Ultimately, however, a vigorous rebuilding program, particularly robust during the 1930s, virtually transformed the city’s face and patterns of life.
This fall, The Wolfsonian-Florida International University is presenting “Tokyo: The Imperial Capital,” an exhibition of woodblock prints by Japanese artist Kishio Koizumi (1893-1945). The exhibition runs through May 2. Koizumi captured the drama of the rebirth of the imperial Japanese capital in the portfolio One Hundred Pictures of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era (Showa dai Tokyo hyakuzue), produced in installments from 1928 to 1940.
For most of the Twentieth Century Tokyo has embodied dramatic transformations. Soon after Koizumi documented the postearthquake renewal, Tokyo was again reshaped following World War II. These images provide a snapshot of a city striving toward imperial splendor.
“Only in recent years have social and art historians begun to carefully study the art produced in Japan during the 60 or so years of extraordinary social change between the ‘reopening’ to interaction with the world in the 1860s and the debacle of the Pacific war. Within this huge body of visual material are fascinating indicators and clues about larger cultural and political shifts,” commented James T. Ulak, the chief curator of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who co-curated the show with The Wolfsonian’s assistant director for exhibitions and curatorial affairs, Marianne Lamonaca. Ulak also serves as head of the collections and research division for the Freer and Sackler.
“Kishio Koizumi used as his framework the well-known Nineteenth Century print series The Hundred Views of Edo by Hiroshige,” Lamonaca explains. “But in this case he records the period following the Great Earthquake of 1923, when Tokyo was being rebuilt according to Westernized ideas about what a modern, international city should be.”
Through these prints he embraces the modern spirit of the times but also maintains certain aspects of traditional Japanese culture, she adds. “It’s evident in the content, but it’s also based in the time-honored technique of printmaking. He accepts modern amenities but insists on respecting the past.” For example, new facilities such as the Haneda International Airport are juxtaposed with traditional structures, such as the Asakusa Kannon Temple, whose main building was spared in the earthquake and became a symbol of survival.
Rather than portray the actual devastation and resulting pain and dislocation caused by the earthquake, Koizumi’s prints look forward, to a future bright with promise. Yamashita Entrance to Ueno Park, completed in September 1931, depicts the area once associated with the enormous refugee camp created in September 1923 to manage the displaced residents of Tokyo. Koizumi contrasts the memory of turmoil with the peacefulness of 1931, a time when women can walk alone at night and in Western dress.
In both of the prints, “Yamashita Entrance to Ueno Park” and “Subway in Spring,” March 1937, “we also see how women enjoyed new freedoms in Koizumi’s depictions of this newly modern city,” Lamonaca observes. “Subway in Spring” portrays young girls traveling to a modern department store, eager to participate in consumer culture and unescorted by men.
“Along with the introduction of modern amenities, such as a subway and department stores, the creation of this imperial city included an airport and other facilities implicated in the military buildup that led to the Second World War,” Lamonaca said.
By the time Koizumi developed Haneda International Airport in March 1937, Japan had become an aviation powerhouse, and claimed a substantial airplane manufacturing capacity. Military aircraft had already been victorious in numerous excursions over China and Manchuria.
When Koizumi produced “Army Shooting Range at Okubo” in August 1937, the China war had already started. Koizumi was so impressed that the elite soldiers of Japan were training at such a firing range that he wrote, “[The] sound of live fire is invigorating.”
Representative of the individual artist-printmaker “s_saku hanga” (creative print) movement that was emerging at the time, Koizumi worked directly with the materials, actually carving the blocks himself and making the prints. The resulting prints reveal highly personalized interpretations of the city and its meanings.
Photographs and contemporaneous documents will complement the print display. A catalog co-authored by Ulak, Lamonaca and Frederic A. Sharf, collector and independent scholar, will consider the Koizumi ensemble in the context of art history and the social trends of the period.
The Wolfsonian-FIU, 1001 Washington Avenue, is open Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm; Thursday, 11 am to 9 pm; Sunday, noon to 5 pm. For information, 305-531-1001 or visit www.wolfsonian.org.
