KYOTO-TOKYO: FROM SAMURAIS TO MANGAS
From July 14 to September 12, 2010
Inaugurated on July 13, 2010, by HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco and Prince Hitachi, brother of the Emperor of Japan, the "KYOTO-TOKYO, from Samurais to Mangas" exhibition is focused on the cultural history of Japan, with the intention of showing the image of a country that has successfully brought together the history, traditions and culture of both yesterday and today.
This mix between vivid ancestral customs and a society dominated by a progressive spirit both confuses and fascinates the Western world. For the curators of the exhibition, Jean-Paul Desroches and his Japanese counterpart, Hiromu Ozawa, it is a question of proposing a new path through Japanese culture, relying on avant-garde museographic writing to show the balance within this country, which has become an essential partner in modernity. This historic fresco begins in the 8th century on the historic Tokaido road that connects the old capital, Kyoto, to Japan's new capital, Tokyo.
The circuit depicts almost 600 pieces including works classified as "cultural property" from the collections of the Tokyo and Kyoto National Museums, the Seikado Bunko Art Museum in Tokyo, the Edo-Tokyo Museum, as well as loans from Western institutions such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, the Stibbert Museum in Florence, the Museums of Oriental Art in Venice and Turin, the Museums of Asian Art in Berlin and San Francisco, not to mention the Guimet Museum in Paris. The exhibition's rhetoric, intended to be "trans-generational," simultaneously evokes the proponents of traditional culture, symbolised by the omnipotence of the samurai warrior, and its modern-day consumers who flourish in the expression of manga and animated films "made in Japan".
