Tokyo

The United States’s occupation of Japan following the end of World War II irreversibly changed Japanese culture, deeply impacting a young Shomei Tomatsu. He later re-marked that during that time, “darkness and light became clearly visible and values shifted 180 degrees . . . and that intense experience became a filter through which I’ve seen things ever since.” Here, Tomatsu encapsulates this dizzying period of foreign interference in his country: a ghostly figure rises off-center, its blurry expression in marked contrast to the highly legible advertisements in the background. This apparition, surrounded by signs of Western consumerism, represents Tomatsu’s awareness of a faltering Japanese national identity and its tension with American culture.