Exhibitions

As the Edo era gave way to the Meiji era in the late 19th century, Japan underwent a variety of changes. These were not limited to the political and economic sphere, they also extended to people's daily lives and the culture as a whole. Similarly, the art world saw myriad new trends and developments. The information, technology, and images that arrived from the West provided Japanese people of the time with a new sense of vision, opening their eyes to a fresh way of seeing, approaching, and presenting things. The so-called civilization and enlightenment of the Meiji Period (1868 -1912) also signaled advances in visual culture. This exhibition is made up of Meiji era art and crafts drawn primarily from the numerous collections of the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History as well as works and documents from other museums and private collections. It functions as a compilation of paintings, photographs, printed matter, sculptures, and crafts that exemplify the distinctive expressions of the Meiji era. Viewers will have an opportunity to see a host of creative works, a product of the chemical reaction that occurred between Japan and the West at this transitional point in history, and discover new aspects of Meiji art.