Koizumi Kishio: Remembering Tokyo

October 1, 2014–January 11, 2015
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum @ 10975 SW 17th Street

The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923 was the worst natural disaster ever to strike Japan. It reduced much of Tokyo to rubble and left its inhabitants in despair. In the aftermath, the woodblock artist Koizumi Kishio (1893–1945) produced his most famous series of prints, Showa dai Tokyo hyakkei zue (One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era) between 1928 and 1940. 

This installation at The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, brought together 30 of the 100 views from The Wolfsonian’s collection, all focusing on women in temples and shrines. In most cases, Kishio showed the women in profile or facing away from the audience; the viewer cannot see their faces, and yet the message of each print, along with a sense of nostalgia for the past, was conveyed. This expressive means narrated, on the one hand, a sadness surrounding Tokyo after the calamity, and on the other, an optimism for cosmopolitan rebirth.

Koizumi Kishio: Remembering Tokyo was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.