WERNER BISCHOF: JAPAN BOUNCING BACK

Perhaps the best free exhibition in town at the moment is Werner Bischof Photographic Exhibition “Japon” at the National Showa Memorial Museum.

Held near the controversial Yasukuni Jinja, enshrining Japan’s war dead, the exhibition features excellent images from 1951-2 of late-Occupation-period Japan, snapped by the Swiss photographer, who was also member of the Magnum photo cooperative which also included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Bischof’s nicely timed shots show a country that had recovered remarkably quickly from the devastation of the War, and was at ease with its foreign occupiers. Particularly effective are Bischof’s pictures of children, many of whom were won over to a lifelong pro-Western outlook by the US military’s generous policy of handing out free candy at every opportunity.