shashasha

“Today Tokyo” features photographs taken by Chotoku Tanaka in the early years of his career. In the 1960s, Tanaka discovered his interest in Tokyo as a subject of his photography. It was an era of change both for Japan and Tokyo itself, driven by rapid economic growth and the newly redefined image of Japan in the world following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Resultingly, Tanaka’s snapshots, cityscapes and street photographs, taken in the 1960s and 1970s, offer not only a look at Tanaka’s early steps as a photographer but also capture the ambivalent atmosphere of a country that suddenly found itself within stratospheric growth.

“It wasn’t until the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 that I came to appreciate Tokyo as a theme. 1964 was the year when Tokyo was first recognized not as the capital of a defeated country, but as a dynamic city in the Far East.”
― from Chotoku Tanaka’s afterword