Metamorphosis of Japan After the War @ Open Eye Gallery

Review by Sacha Waldron | 01 Mar 2015

Metamorphosis opens with an image of the sun that shone above photographer Hiroshi Hamaya’s home in Niigata around noon on August 15, 1945. War was officially over and Japanese emperor Hirohito had just announced the unconditional surrender of Japan via a radio broadcast. Two atomic bombs, the long battle of Okinawa and a declaration of war against Japan by the Soviet Union had left the country without hope of victory. Hamaya rushed from his house and pointed his camera at the sky.

Metamorphosis traces the history of Japanese photography from this moment in 1945 through to the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games twenty years later. During this significant period, Japan rose from the decimation of war to take its place as a major economic power. It was also a time when Japanese photography started to emerge from the shackles of the old regime, embracing the new world and adopting photo-realism and much freer styles of expression. We see the role of photography become a language and a document of changing identity in this new society and of the contradictions of tradition merging with modernity.

The exhibition is arranged into three sections organised thematically, rather than historically or by author, which alters the flow of the exhibition. Instead of following a linear path from start to finish I found myself jumping back and forth, noticing a date here, an image there, that would draw me back to previous galleries and works.

There is a lot to see, with over 100 black and white works from 11 photographers working in Japan during this period. The first section, The Aftermath of War, presents a selection of images from the mid-1940s to late 1950s. A large grid of photographs takes up much of this display, with work from Ken Domon, Tadahiko Hayashi and Ihee Kimura. We see families living in burnt-out wastelands and destroyed office buildings, rationing is in place and orphaned children smoke on the street. Japan, however, is slowly beginning to return to normal, theatres re-open and life returns to the red-light district.

Fast forward to the upstairs gallery and Towards a New Japan, Kikuji Kawada’s series The Map brings us images of Lucky Strike packets and Coca-Cola bottles while Takeyoshi Tanuma captures the Japanese youth of the 1960s, smoking, hanging out and flirting. This would be the era of major infrastructural change in the country; the bullet train was built, TVs, fridges and washing machines were the norm in most households and Japan would surpass West Germany as the world’s top camera producer. The floodgates were open for a new form of expression for Japanese photographers, one that would try to make sense of the recent catastrophic past and to the future of the Rising Sun. 

Runs until 26 Apr http://www.openeye.org.uk/main-exhibition/metamorphosis-of-japan-after-the-war