A Long Shadow: Postwar Japan Through the Lens Opens at The Met Fifth Avenue in New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened A Long Shadow: Postwar Japan Through the Lens in Gallery 851 at The Met Fifth Avenue. The museum calls it its first exhibition of Japanese photography since 1995. It is on view through May 2, 2027, and is free with museum admission.

Drawn from The Met's own collection, the show follows Japanese photographers through the decades after World War II, when the country was remade under U.S. military occupation. Okinawa, which stayed under American control until 1972 and still hosts most of the U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan, is a recurring subject, along with the towns that grew up around the bases.

Tōmatsu Shōmei, one of the pioneers of modern Japanese photography, pictured the collision of American and Japanese culture in those base towns. Ishikawa Mao, Ishiuchi Miyako and Tokiwa Toyoko turned to the occupation's effect on women's lives, including their own and those of friends. The Okinawan artist Yamashiro Chikako brings the story into the present. The museum notes that these photographers left the objective style of wartime and postwar reportage for a subjective one rooted in personal experience.

Photobooks and the monthly photography magazines of the period are part of the exhibition too, with many rare books on view, alongside a group of new acquisitions by Tōmatsu, Ishikawa and Ishiuchi.

The Met's November 13 newsletter, "Art in your inbox," marks the show "Just Opened." Other exhibitions listed at the Fifth Avenue building include Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous, through January 31, 2027, and There Are No Words: Si Lewen's Parade.

The Met Fifth Avenue is at 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028. For readers interested in Japan's postwar history or in Japanese photography, the nearly six-month run leaves plenty of time to fit it into a visit.