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Several artworks from the Edo-Tokyo Museum have made their way to France to illustrate the metamorphosis of the vibrant capital of Japan across the centuries

Edgar Degas, one of the prominent figures of the Impressionist movement, had hung above his bed a Japanese print titled Bath House, by Torji Kijonaga. This seemingly minor detail reflects the astonishment felt by European artists – and someone as particular as Degas! –when encountering the spontaneity and freshness of ukiyo-e, which had only been introduced to the Western world in the second half of the nineteenth century.

While the European art scene was still bound by the mummified impulses of the so-called art pompier, and burdened by centuries of academic tonalism, Japanese prints celebrated a floating figurative world, where artworks shimmering of pure colour captured all those passions and desires that make life touchingly meaningful: lovers, kabuki actors, enchanted landscapes, and fleeting glimpses of rural life.

Today, although, European collective imagination remains firmly tied to the visual legacy of 18th- and 19th-century Japanese art. The names that come to mind are especially those of Hokusai and Hiroshige, who captured all the wonder of Japan during that time: from the bustling streets of Edo to the enchanted landscapes along the Tōkaidō, to the towering presence of Mount Fuji, an enduring symbol of spirituality and beauty. But what became of Japanese art after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, in the rapidly changing Meiji era, when history itself was moving at an increasingly vertiginous pace, both in Japan and the rest of the world? This is a question few European observers are equipped to answer, and it forms the backdrop of the new exhibition at the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris, Tokyo, naissance d'une ville moderne, curated by Shûko Koyama and Tarô Nitta, which will run until February 2025. On this occasion, several artworks from the Edo-Tokyo Museum, rarely shown in France, illustrate the trajectory of Japanese art and the history of a city, such as Tokyo, oscillating between a fascination with the overwhelming pull of modernity and a nostalgia for the days of ancient Edo, offering a unique perspective on a city in perpetual transformation.

Not all transformations, however, arise from propitious events: this is even more true in the history of our cities, which are often reborn because of dramatic circumstances. London in 1666 and Chicago in 1871 were devastated by ravenous fires that changed their history forever: would Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral and skyscrapers have existed otherwise? An earthquake and tsunami, in 1755, reduced Lisbon to a pile of rubble: a city with a millennial history, and that today features enlightened, orderly and symmetrical streets, with wide and airy squares. The exhibition, in parallel, juxtaposes the birth of modern Tokyo with a tragic event, the terrible earthquake that in 1923 struck the Kantô region, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and destroying nearly half of Tokyo at the time. Reconstruction work, however, enabled the development of road and rail networks, the renovation of waterways, the creation of spacious and green parks, the introduction of innovative building materials such as concrete and steel ...

The modernization of Tokyo, however, has much deeper roots: the exhibition opens in fact with View of Takanawa Ushimachi under a shrouded moon by Yamamura Kōka, which depicts Japan's first railroad, inaugurated in 1872 along Tokyo Bay.

This was a time of great artistic effervescence: during the Taishô era, the genres of bijin-ga (portraits of beautiful women) and yakusha-e (portraits of kabuki actors) experienced a sparkling renewal, driven by the vision of great artists like Hashiguchi Goyô and Yamamura Kōka. The floating world of ukiyo-e gave way to shin hanga prints, closely tied to the roaring currents of modernity. Yet, alongside this rapid advancement, there was also a sense of nostalgic longing for a vanished past: this is clear in Twelve Scenes of Tokyo, where Kawase Hasui captures the last remnants of Tokyo’s ancient Edo spirit. Among the scenes are Sannô, with its serene Hie-jinja shrine; Komagata-gashi, where Hasui depicts a quiet horse resting in front of a bamboo curtain...

...and Atago-yama, which he portrayed in a melancholic springtime vision, where “the cherry petals scattered by the wind seemed to mourn the end of spring”...

Then came September 1, 1923. At 11:58 a.m., a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Tokyo and the western part of Kanagawa Prefecture, bringing death and devastation. 105,300 people perished, and 293,300 homes were destroyed by the tremors and the flames. Many artists sought to express their sensitivity in response to the magnitude of the disaster: some with profound empathy for the tragedy, while others—like Hiratsuka Un'ichi, the creator of Landscapes of Ruins after the Tokyo Earthquake—approached it for example with a detached, documentary precision.

But then... was it all lost? It should be remembered that the word "crisis" comes from the Greek κρίνειν, meaning a moment of choice, of decision. Crisis, then, as both a danger and an opportunity! With remarkable courage, the Japanese people made the reconstruction of the devastated capital a symbol of resilience and renewal. All the rubble, under a bold reconstruction plan, was transformed into a kaleidoscopic urban landscape, and new roads, bridges, canals, parks, markets, and railway stations became vibrant hubs of a revitalized city. Greater Tokyo was born, stretching over 554 square kilometres, expanded by the inclusion of surrounding districts, and home to a population of 5.31 million!

Art always reflects the spirit of its time, capturing its essence and distilling its purest form. During a time when European architects like Walter Gropius and Bruno Taut travelled to Japan to admire its traditional architecture, Tokyo itself was undergoing a dramatic transformation. While Taut famously reflected, “immersed in this world, where is Europe now? Florence, by comparison, is puny... Baroque is unbalanced, Saint Gedeon a box of bricks, and even the Gothic is merely a contrite transcendentalism: how little remains!”—Tokyo, the "capital of the East", was evolving into a dynamic metropolis of reinforced concrete and steel.

Art did not shy away from capturing the vigorous transformation of this urban landscape. A notable example is the series of One Hundred Views of the New Tokyo, created with the intention of “conveying to posterity the scent of the air and the breath of the inhabitants of the Tokyo we live in”. The focus was no longer on the idyllic serenity of the past, but on the dynamism of modernity, symbolized by dazzling icons of progress and change, such as the Togoshi-Ginza station, depicted by Koizumi Kishio; or the delicate glowing hues of the Tokyo Tower, immortalized by Kasamatsu Shirô...

...but also, the Nihonbashi Bridge with its elegant chandeliers, captured in the early morning light by Kawase Hasu...

...and, finally, as depicted by Fujimori Shizuo, a new aerodrome constructed in a previously quiet and relatively unknown rural area, Haneda...

Meanwhile, a new urban society emerged in this rich graphic production: one that drinks coffee and alcohol in bars, watched baseball at Meiji Jingu Stadium, sought relief at the shores of Toshimaen Park, or rode the subway in Shinjuku!

At the heart of this new spectacle of entertainment were the mobo and moga — “modern” boys and girls — who embraced the fresh influences of a rapidly globalizing world, infused with a newfound awareness of themselves and their contemporaneity. Many works, such as Yamakawa Shûhô's Autumn, capture this shimmering generation, adorned in fashionable clothes, jewellery, and accessories, and fully immersed in all the opportunities that modern urban life had to offer. This vibrant scene was brought to life in new prints, blending the techniques of traditional Japanese art—those large expanses of bright, vivid colour and bold, defined lines that Degas so admired—and applying them to the realities of 20th-century life. And after all, wasn’t it another Frenchman, Charles Baudelaire, who famously argued that the role of art is to extract the epic side of modernity?

In the end, the art of early 20th-century Japan stands as both a reflection and a celebration of a society in flux. It captures the delicate balance between preserving the rich traditions of the past and embracing the exhilarating, sometimes overwhelming, pace of modernization. Through the lens of artists who sought to document this transformative period—whether through the nostalgic tones of the old Edo or the dazzling vitality of a modern capital —Tokyo emerges throughout the exhibition as a city of reinvention. In the face of destruction, the city and its people found resilience, using art as both a record and a beacon of rebirth, proving that even in the darkest of times... creativity can shape a new future!