EXHIBITIONS
Perfectly timed to coincide with the delayed Olympics this summer, Graham Hooper visited the Ashmolean in Oxford to uncover Tokyo through its latest exhibition
What do I know about Tokyo? Very little, despite, at the time of writing, it hosting the Olympic games this year. Understanding just how far in advance galleries and museums must plan ahead to secure the loan of artworks from collections across the globe, it was surely a clever and wellresearched idea to synchronise the current show at Oxford Ashmolean museum, Tokyo: Art and Photography (running until the start of January next year) with one of world’s most important and high-profile sporting events.
That said both had been postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I watched some of the sports coverage, and I’m sure many especially young people will have, if for no other reason than to see to see 13-year old
Sky Brown take bronze in women’s skateboarding. Impressively flying the flag for young people and sport. But there was little if any accompanying material on television or otherwise about the city in which it is being held, and that seems such a shame. The coverage of the Eurovision song contest takes time out to say a little about each nation, and the host city too.
Before I venture to talk about the show, I’ll say a quick word about Oxford for teachers. The train station is well located close to the city centre to walk group bookings safely for the five or ten minutes it will take to accompany them to the grand frontage of the museum. Of course, the city is a beautiful, with its Georgian town houses and busting shopping centre, the university buildings and, one of my very favourite places on the planet the Pitt Rivers Museum
(do you know about the shrunken heads and the witch in a bottle?)
Booking at the Ashmolean, with 15-minute slots, is still in place, making timing your arrival a little tighter than in the past. The exhibition, an additional cost to the otherwise free displays, is on the top floor, and though not a huge exhibition, with three or four amply
sized rooms, that are not over-crowded. The bridge taking you into the first space is a tunnel of printed pink cherry blossom. I know a little about Japan, and was expecting the foliage, as well as mention of earthquake threat and some of the imperial history of the country.
I was not expecting to learn that Tokyo alone has a population of around 37 million inhabitants, that’s around half the population of the whole of the UK but in just one city! Immediately I am mindful of the sheer intensity of such a densely populated urban centre. Again, Tokyo brings to mind, if anything, the neon signage at night, made more famous by scenes from Lost in Translation, set in the city, and featuring dreamy panoramic views from the Park Hyatt hotel.
The Ashmolean has broken down the exhibition into sections exploring different, though overlapping, aspects of the city. It considers the city a geographical location, looking at it over time (a history of 400 years is covered). We discover that it was built on a convergence of no less than four tectonic plates (hence the propensity for highly destructive seismic shifts). We see the bridges, the buildings, the rain and Mount Fuji ever present in the background.
What the show does very well is juxtapose old woodblock prints and their soft, gentle coloured layers of midnight blues, mossy greens and peach tones, with contemporary photographs – both in colour and black and white, in framed wall prints and book form. They’re frankly exquisite though needing time to really enjoy. They can be relatively small, so require close up scrutiny for their subtle shades and nuanced perspectives to be truly savoured. “Good Evening Sumida River” by Sugiyama Mototsugu from 1993 is a wonderful example. The lights of the commercial complex in the distance flicker across the water as two barges cross the river. A few patches of red (roof lights), green (bridge arches) or yellow details (late night office illuminations) are all that break up the otherwise aquamarines of the cityscape, of which almost half is filled by the water in the foreground and then another third the night sky above. It offers up a very romantic view of a modern city, though it could be London or Paris without close attention.
Nishino Sohei’s Diorama, presented early on, is made up of many separate photographs collaged together to create an enormous (nearly two metre square) multi-perspective depiction in black and white of the roads and buildings that compete for space. Again, whilst it could almost be any cotemporary metropolis, it does well to explain in one single, visual statement, the tightly compacted topography of the capital city. I was particularly entranced by a sequence of daily photographs by Takano Ryudai of Tokyo Tower, from 2014. With his fixed standpoint (he used a tripod) he captured the changing light and colour of one of Tokyo’s best-known landmarks from his high window balcony terrace. Shot on colour slide film which has a rich luminosity and clarity in the details, I was transfixed by the visual diary changing
What the show does very well is juxtapose old woodblock prints and their soft, gentle coloured layers of midnight blues, mossy greens and peach tones, with contemporary photographs
rapidly before my eyes. It gave at once a domestic and also expansive insight into life for many ordinary Tokyo dwellers. If it weren’t for the red and white striped framework of the mast (similar in structure to the Eiffel Tower) the city otherwise is somewhat unremarkable. Modern high-rise architecture has hidden what might otherwise be visible.
The exhibition then considers the people; workers and communities, families and individuals, who call Tokyo their home. Many must live with the constant threat of earthquakes that would destroy much of even very new housing stock, with all the flooding and fire that would inevitably follow. Much attention is given over to the nightlife, and space specifically to show the differing ways in which photographers have portrayed it. Japan has been an important centre for photography since the emergence of ‘Provoke’. Primarily just a three-issue magazine for new writing and pictures, it quickly heralded a new movement in lens-based culture. The likes of Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu and Araki gaining international interest for their high contrast black and white shots that eschewed convention. In the 1960’s and 70’s as Japanese camera production began to rival that of its European counterparts, for build quality and popularity, photographers embraced wonky framing, soft focus, harsh flash lighting, to show off Tokyo after dark. Pimps and prostitutes, the homeless and lost, users of the notorious ‘love hotels’ (bookable by the hour at any time of day or night). There are a number of sets of these kinds of images, highly evocative and certainly dynamic, printed large, in grids, or projected, and shown in artist’s photobooks in various display cabinets. It’s a shame you can’t flick the pages, but you get the idea quickly enough. If anything they fast become routine and ubiquitous in this exhibition. They are meant to be absorbed in groups, swiftly and superficially, to present a mood or demonstrate a lifestyle, and in that regard they are effective. Accordingly, Tokyo is free and dangerous, exciting and dark.
Quite aside from these particular kinds of images, there were other types of photographic interventions that caught me off guard for their humour or insight. Of note are two pieces, one by Mohri Y ko, entitled “Moré, more, Tokyo fieldwork, since 2009” and Koizumi Meiro’s “My Voice Would Reach You” (2009). Y ko’s pictures, on the surface positively rather dull, actually document water leaks around the city, and the various ways in which these holes have been plugged, successfully or otherwise. These often do-it-yourself functional sculptures are the result of minor ground tremors, and would be a familiar site to those using the public transport networks, for example, but strange and unusual to anyone visiting from outside.
Meiro’s video is a tragi-comic affair. A lone figure pictured standing amidst the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, voices the lines written to his mother, recently deceased, but on anonymous calls to local businesses. The series of confused and confusing sentences and responses, feel like snippets from a surreal play, where individuals are shown as overwhelmed and lost within the overpowering streets.
a rich luminosity and clarity in the details, I was transfixed by the visual diary changing rapidly before my eyes
Tokyo: Art and Photography
is part of a bigger, broader study of the country. Samurai’s Gold (exploring the use of money from 1600 to 1900) and Vision of a Moment (Japanese prints, 1950-1960) begin in September and October respectively, and can only compliment this Tokyo showing. I also took time out to enjoy a small collection of Anagama fired traditional pottery (which uses a unique wood-firing technique) and a replica tea house, constructed by master craftsmen and builders, complete with accoutrements, beautifully displayed and labelled.
To use the opportunity of the Olympic games to look at the art and deeper culture of a host city is a brilliant and genuinely inspired idea. I was very pleased to be able to support this kind of brave venture. Paris in 2024, so now is the time to begin preparations. I trust the Ashmolean has already.