The 1is September 1923, during the Taisho era (1912-1926), an earthquake shook the Kanto region, which surrounds Tokyo, causing more than 100,000 deaths. Nearly half of the city’s homes, businesses, factories and infrastructure were destroyed. The city that will emerge, after the reconstructions, will have a completely different appearance, accelerated modernization, already begun in 1868 with the entry into the Meiji era, revolutionizing the urban landscape. In around fifteen years, the population will increase from 2 million to 5 million inhabitants, the city will expand its perimeter as road and rail transport develops.
This transformation, linked to the reopening of the country to international trade after centuries of withdrawal, is told at the Maison de la culture du Japon, in Paris, through a remarkable choice of prints from the beginning of the 20th century.e century signed by artists, observers of these mutations, who documented them. Works hitherto little distributed outside Japanese borders, where we are especially familiar with engravings from the Edo period (1603-1868), ukiyo-e (“images of the floating world”) by Hokusai, Utamaro or Hiroshige.
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