Monday, September 8, 2025 – Wednesday, November 5, 2025
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Shadai Gallery, we will hold an exhibition entitled All the Livelong Postwar Days. In Japan, the term “postwar” has been used since the nation’s defeat in the Pacific War and it continues to be used today, 80 years later. We will take the opportunity of “Postwar Year 80” to look back on that reality and to explore how the expression of photographers has been linked to historical eras.
The sociologist Mita Munesuke defined the years from 1945 to 1960 as the “age of ideals” and the years from then until the early 1970s as the “age of dreams.” According to Mita, “the age of ideals” that sought to transform the harsh reality of post-defeat Japan ended in disappointment with the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960. This marked the advent of the “age of dreams,” marked by the pursuit of material wealth.
1975, the year the Shadai Gallery opened, was a time when rapid economic growth had begun to taper off and most of the Japanese population had achieved a sense of material sufficiency. With the end of the Vietnam War during that same year, it was also a time when the “season of politics” was on the wane.
The currents of time from 1945 to 1975, from the period of US Occupation to postwar recovery, followed by rapid economic growth and its conclusion corresponded loosely to currents in photographic expression, from photo-realism to Vivo, Provoke, and Kompora (“contemporary photography”).
The material goods and culture introduced by the American Occupation put down wide and deep roots in Japanese society, forming the foundation of the mass consumption society that continues in the present. We will introduce the ways that photographers established their own expression in the midst of the clash between Japanese culture and American culture, and the ways they deepened their personal vision within the constraints of the times.
