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This programme contains some scenes of a sexual nature. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:05 | |
It was a bright August morning, | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
and commuters were making their way to work in a provincial city | 0:00:10 | 0:00:14 | |
in western Japan. It was shaping up to be a day like any other. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:18 | |
But at exactly 08:15, | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
an American bombardier above them pulled a lever. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
The commuters may have seen a flash of light, | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
but within seconds, they and the city of Hiroshima | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
were engulfed in the largest man-made explosion in history. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
70,000 people were killed instantly, | 0:00:59 | 0:01:01 | |
and the city was all but annihilated. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
It was the beginning of the nuclear age. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:09 | |
But the Japanese had seen disasters before. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
The history of Japanese cities is the history of their destruction. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:22 | |
For centuries, indeed millennia, | 0:01:22 | 0:01:23 | |
earthquakes, fires, floods, tsunamis and wars | 0:01:23 | 0:01:27 | |
have decimated the country's towns and cities over and over again. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:32 | |
But this relentless cycle has had a dramatic creative impact. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:36 | |
It has forced the Japanese | 0:01:40 | 0:01:42 | |
to constantly rebuild and reimagine their cities, | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
and today, they are some of | 0:01:45 | 0:01:46 | |
the most dynamic places in the world. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:48 | |
To discover why, I'm going to explore the culture | 0:01:50 | 0:01:53 | |
of three great Japanese cities in three decisive eras. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:58 | |
Kyoto, the country's capital for over a thousand years. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:04 | |
A city of elegance and splendour that gave birth | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
to a golden age of painting and poetry | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
and even turned tea into an art form. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:12 | |
Holding this bowl is a kind of revelation. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:17 | |
Edo, a teeming metropolis with a dark underbelly. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:24 | |
A floating world of actors, artists, | 0:02:25 | 0:02:28 | |
and sex workers that produced a bohemian, urban culture | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
centuries before the West. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:33 | |
And Tokyo, today the largest urban area on the planet, | 0:02:37 | 0:02:42 | |
a conveyor belt of fashion, film, | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
and contemporary art that now influences the entire world. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
These three cities produce some of Japan's finest | 0:02:51 | 0:02:54 | |
and most distinctive art, but they did more than that. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
They also shaped the country's attitude | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
towards its past and present, | 0:03:01 | 0:03:02 | |
as well as to East and West, and in doing so, | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
they helped mould the very idea of Japan itself. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
In the spring of 793 AD, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:28 | |
a small group of men embarked on a journey through Honshu. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:33 | |
They claimed they were on a hunting trip. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
But they weren't hunting animals, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
they were searching for a piece of land. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
The men were convinced that their hometown, | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
which was called Nagaoka-kyo, was cursed. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
For the best part of a decade, it had been ravaged by floods, | 0:03:48 | 0:03:52 | |
disease, famine, and even a series of mysterious murders. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:56 | |
They knew they had to abandon it, | 0:03:56 | 0:03:59 | |
but first, they had to find a site for a new city. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
They hadn't gone far before they alighted on something promising, | 0:04:05 | 0:04:09 | |
a vast, fertile basin, | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
surrounded on three sides by a fortress of mountains, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
and irrigated by not one, but two rivers. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:18 | |
They had found their site. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
By the autumn of the following year, | 0:04:23 | 0:04:25 | |
the Emperor had founded his capital here. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
He called it Heian-kyo, capital of peace and tranquillity, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:32 | |
though it later became known as Kyoto. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:35 | |
Kyoto has been built and rebuilt many times since then, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:43 | |
but it remains a place of unparalleled riches. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
It is home to 1,600 temples, 400 shrines, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
and 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
more than any other city in the world. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
The original city of Kyoto was a work of art in its own right. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:03 | |
It was inspired by Chang'an, the great capital of China, | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
and every part of it was carefully planned. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:09 | |
The city was organised, almost like New York, | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
according to a strict grid system. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
Now, these streets were splendid thoroughfares. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:21 | |
Even the narrowest of them was 78 feet wide, and the widest of them, | 0:05:21 | 0:05:26 | |
Suzaku Avenue, which ran right down through the middle of the city, | 0:05:26 | 0:05:30 | |
that was almost 300 feet wide. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:32 | |
It was probably the widest boulevard in the world at the time. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:37 | |
And Suzaku Avenue terminated right here, in the north of Kyoto, | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
at the city palace. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
Now, I've got to say, looking down over this scale model, | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
I really think it looks like a wonderful place to live. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
Most of the houses are one storey high, so it's light, it's airy. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:54 | |
There are gardens, there are lakes, there are rivers. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:58 | |
It is a world away from the dark warrens of filth | 0:05:58 | 0:06:02 | |
that made up most cities at the time. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:04 | |
Kyoto was the blueprint for a utopia, | 0:06:06 | 0:06:10 | |
a dream of a rational and beautiful society | 0:06:10 | 0:06:12 | |
that the Emperor hoped would last forever. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:15 | |
But it wasn't as perfect as it seemed. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
Over the following generations, | 0:06:18 | 0:06:20 | |
the palace burned down no less than 14 times, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:24 | |
and the whole western half of the city was repeatedly flooded. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
But this didn't prevent the fortunate members of the court | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
from enjoying the finer things in life... | 0:06:33 | 0:06:35 | |
..most of them borrowed from the Chinese. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
They ruminated on cherry blossoms and staged moon-watching ceremonies. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:48 | |
They even collected crickets | 0:06:48 | 0:06:50 | |
and made music to accompany their chirps. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
In Kyoto, style was emphatically substance. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
If any one idea governed the cultural values of the court, | 0:06:59 | 0:07:03 | |
it was the word miyabi. | 0:07:03 | 0:07:05 | |
Now, miyabi doesn't have a direct English translation, | 0:07:05 | 0:07:08 | |
but it meant a kind of refinement or aesthetic sensibility - | 0:07:08 | 0:07:12 | |
the ability to recognise and appreciate beauty | 0:07:12 | 0:07:16 | |
in all of its forms. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:17 | |
The culture of Kyoto was advanced in another notable way. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
Many of its leading practitioners were women, | 0:07:24 | 0:07:28 | |
and the greatest of them was Murasaki Shikibu. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
Born into a minor aristocratic family around 973 AD, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
Murasaki served as a lady-in-waiting at the Imperial Court. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:42 | |
But in her spare time, she started writing something. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:46 | |
Murasaki was writing a story of monumental proportions, | 0:07:47 | 0:07:51 | |
indeed, twice as long as War And Peace. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
It spanned four generations and 75 years. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:58 | |
It contained 430 different characters and 795 unique poems. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:04 | |
And today, many consider it to be | 0:08:04 | 0:08:06 | |
the first novel ever written anywhere in the world. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
It was called The Tale Of Genji. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:16 | |
The story focuses on the life of a rakish young prince | 0:08:16 | 0:08:19 | |
called Hikaru Genji. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
Intelligent, beautiful and possessed with impeccable taste, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
Genji is the paragon of miyabi. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
And though he spends much of his youth womanizing, | 0:08:30 | 0:08:33 | |
he becomes one of the court's most powerful men. | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
He builds a grand palace in the city | 0:08:36 | 0:08:38 | |
and fills it with the women he loves. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:40 | |
But then things start to go wrong. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
Genji marries a woman who then bears another man's child. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:49 | |
His relationships with his other lovers deteriorate, | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
and when his greatest love dies, Genji loses the will to live. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:57 | |
It is not long before his life also comes to an end. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:00 | |
"The whole world mourned Genji. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:07 | |
"It was as if a light had gone out. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:09 | |
"For his ladies, for his grandchildren, | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
"for others who had been close to him, the sadness was, of course, | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
"more immediate and intense. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
"'It is true,' they all thought, | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
"'The cherry blossoms of spring are loved | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
"'because they bloom so briefly.'" | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
Genji's life was indeed cut short, | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
but Murasaki's remarkable novel lived on. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:31 | |
Many illustrations of The Tale Of Genji | 0:09:34 | 0:09:37 | |
were made in painted hand scrolls. | 0:09:37 | 0:09:39 | |
Here in the Tokugawa Museum in Nagoya, | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
are the oldest examples from the 12th century. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
Only fragments survive, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
but they are some of the country's greatest treasures. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
They are almost a millennium old. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:58 | |
The complex patterns of colour and shape | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
still convey powerful emotional stories. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:03 | |
And I've come to look at one of the most affecting. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:08 | |
This painting captures a turning point in Genji's life. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:15 | |
While he was away, his wife had an affair with his nephew. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
She became pregnant and gave birth to a boy called Kaoru. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
Now Genji didn't want to admit to being cuckolded, | 0:10:23 | 0:10:25 | |
so he had to except Kaoru as his heir even though he knew he wasn't. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
And here, we can see Genji holding the baby boy in his arms, | 0:10:29 | 0:10:35 | |
and though this image is small and old and tatty, | 0:10:35 | 0:10:39 | |
you can still see the complex, | 0:10:39 | 0:10:41 | |
powerful emotions racing across Genji's face. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:46 | |
It's taut with resentment and humiliation and yet, | 0:10:46 | 0:10:50 | |
as Genji looks down on that beautiful, innocent boy, | 0:10:50 | 0:10:55 | |
we can see him beginning to soften. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:58 | |
His eyebrows are lifting and his little pink lips | 0:10:58 | 0:11:02 | |
are curling into a smile. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:04 | |
The composition has been used to emphasise and dramatise | 0:11:06 | 0:11:10 | |
Genji's own torn state of mind. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
So these powerful diagonals race across the surface of the picture | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
and imprison Genji right into the corner. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
The fabrics tumble into this chaotic mess of lines, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:23 | |
and, perhaps most powerfully of all, | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
the relationship between Genji here and his wife, | 0:11:25 | 0:11:28 | |
who has become a nun following her indiscretion, speaks volumes. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:34 | |
They are together, but they are, of course, completely apart. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
This masterpiece of Japanese art | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
reminds me that, though times may change, | 0:11:45 | 0:11:47 | |
human emotions don't. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:49 | |
The people of Kyoto had mastered the art of painting... | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
..but aesthetics pervaded everything they did. | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
Poetry, calligraphy, garden design and over the centuries, | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
it even extended to tea. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
The Japanese had been enjoying tea since the ninth century, | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
when it was introduced from China. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:17 | |
But in the late 16th century, | 0:12:17 | 0:12:19 | |
it began to take on a special significance. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
At the Buddhist temple of Daitoku-ji | 0:12:26 | 0:12:28 | |
is a teahouse made in honour | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
of the great Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyu. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:35 | |
Here, in a small, simple room, | 0:12:35 | 0:12:37 | |
Rikyu and his companions turned tea drinking into an art form. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
Sen no Rikyu believed that tea was much more than a drink, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:47 | |
it was a revelation. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
When drunk in the right way, | 0:12:49 | 0:12:50 | |
tea helped people rise to a different plane of consciousness. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:54 | |
"When you hear the water splash into the tea bowl," he once said, | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
"you will feel the dust in your mind is washed away." | 0:12:57 | 0:13:01 | |
Sen no Rikyu's ideas gradually crystallised | 0:13:04 | 0:13:07 | |
into what we know as the Japanese tea ceremony. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
Sen no Rikyu wanted the tea ceremony | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
to express an appreciation of modesty, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
imperfection and impermanence, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:32 | |
and this even extended to his utensils. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
He thought traditional ceramics were too elaborate, | 0:14:35 | 0:14:37 | |
so he set about finding an alternative. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:40 | |
He asked a craftsman called Chojiro | 0:14:40 | 0:14:42 | |
to fashion a simple, undecorated tea bowl. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:46 | |
This was the beginning of raku pottery, | 0:14:46 | 0:14:49 | |
and Chojiro's descendants are still making it today. | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
Raku Kichizaemon XV is the 15th generation of potters in his family. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:02 | |
He continues a tradition that was started 450 years ago, | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
and he is, in my view, | 0:15:06 | 0:15:07 | |
one of Japan's greatest living artists. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:10 | |
So, where are we here? | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
Here's many, many old clay. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
Now, I use the clay, this clay, | 0:15:19 | 0:15:24 | |
my grand-grandfathers rub | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
about 100 years ago. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
Wow. And are you collecting clay for your descendants? | 0:15:31 | 0:15:36 | |
Yes. Yes. Yes. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:37 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:15:40 | 0:15:44 | |
This is a seminal tea bowl. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:14 | |
It was made by Chojiro, the founder of raku pottery. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
It's more than 400 years old. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:20 | |
It might even have been used by Sen no Rikyu | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
in the late 16th century. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
Now, at first, it doesn't look like much. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
It's small and misshapen, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:29 | |
the walls aren't straight, the lips are wobbly, | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
and it's covered in a simple, plain black glaze. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
But to really appreciate it, you need to pick it up... | 0:17:37 | 0:17:41 | |
..because holding this bowl is a kind of revelation. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
The weighting, the texture, the temperature are all just perfect. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:52 | |
And as I hold it, I can feel this groove | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
running along the middle of it | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
that fits the hands perfectly. | 0:17:56 | 0:17:59 | |
It feels almost as though | 0:17:59 | 0:18:01 | |
you're feeling Chojiro's fingers 400 years later. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
This is an artwork to be held, to be touched, to be felt. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:10 | |
This is an artwork to be used. | 0:18:10 | 0:18:12 | |
This tea bowl is the epitome of wabi-sabi, | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
that Japanese reverence for the imperfect, the unfinished, | 0:18:17 | 0:18:21 | |
the worn-out, because to appreciate those things | 0:18:21 | 0:18:23 | |
isn't only to be humble, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
it's to understand that we, too, are imperfect. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:28 | |
We, too, are as flawed as this tea bowl. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:32 | |
So this object isn't simply a bowl, it's a lesson. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
A lesson to all of us to appreciate the simpler things in life. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:40 | |
In the 800 years since its founding, | 0:18:48 | 0:18:50 | |
Kyoto had done much to establish a classical Japanese culture, | 0:18:50 | 0:18:55 | |
although much of it had been Chinese in flavour. | 0:18:55 | 0:18:57 | |
Kyoto would continue to flourish after 1600, | 0:18:59 | 0:19:02 | |
but a new regime was coming, and it would create a new great city. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
Japan was embroiled in civil war for the entire 16th century... | 0:19:17 | 0:19:21 | |
..until, in 1600, | 0:19:22 | 0:19:24 | |
a warrior called Tokugawa Ieyasu took control of the country. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:27 | |
He was given the title shogun | 0:19:30 | 0:19:32 | |
and established the Tokugawa Shogunate | 0:19:32 | 0:19:35 | |
which ruled the country for more than 260 years. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
Rejecting Kyoto, Ieyasu moved his capital | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
to a down-at-heel fishing village | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
300 miles north called Edo. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
It would not remain a fishing village for long. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:57 | |
Like most Japanese cities, Edo was prone to destruction. | 0:20:09 | 0:20:13 | |
In fact, over the next few centuries, | 0:20:13 | 0:20:15 | |
it was torn apart by fire pretty much every 20 to 30 years, | 0:20:15 | 0:20:20 | |
but those fires did nothing to suppress Edo's growth. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
By the early 1700s, more than a million people lived there, | 0:20:23 | 0:20:27 | |
twice as many as in London. | 0:20:27 | 0:20:29 | |
It had become one of the largest cities - perhaps THE largest city - | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
in the world. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
The Tokugawa closed the country's borders | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
to all but a few Dutch traders | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
and enforced a rigid social hierarchy. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
The rulers of Edo preached a gospel of discipline and austerity, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:51 | |
but not everyone was listening. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
Over time, the townsfolk started to make their own culture, | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
a popular culture, a counterculture of astonishing vitality. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
Their Edo was populated by actors, | 0:21:10 | 0:21:12 | |
dancers, sumo wrestlers, puppet shows, | 0:21:12 | 0:21:16 | |
gangsters and courtesans. | 0:21:16 | 0:21:17 | |
It was a long way from the refined culture of the court. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
Japan had seen nothing like it before. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:31 | |
These decadent goings-on | 0:21:36 | 0:21:38 | |
were centred around Edo's pleasure district, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
a walled community that was often referred to as ukiyo, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
which in English means floating world. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
But the floating world wasn't only a physical place, | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
it was also a state of mind. | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
"Living only for the moment, | 0:21:57 | 0:21:59 | |
"turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, | 0:21:59 | 0:22:03 | |
"the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves, | 0:22:03 | 0:22:05 | |
"singing songs, drinking wine, | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
"diverting ourselves and just floating, floating, | 0:22:08 | 0:22:11 | |
"caring not a whit for the pauperism staring us in the face, | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
"refusing to be disheartened, | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
"like a gourd floating along with the river current - | 0:22:16 | 0:22:19 | |
"this is what we call the floating world." | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
We tend to talk a lot about 19th-century Paris | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
being the epitome of a modern, urban, decadent culture, | 0:22:26 | 0:22:31 | |
but Edo was doing exactly the same thing 200 years earlier. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
And Edo's floating world produced art forms | 0:22:41 | 0:22:44 | |
that were distinctly Japanese. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:46 | |
One of them was kabuki. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:49 | |
Legend has it that kabuki was invented in Kyoto in 1603, | 0:22:52 | 0:22:57 | |
the same year as the shogunate itself. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
It's said that it started when a group of women | 0:23:00 | 0:23:02 | |
staged an explicit song and dance routine | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
for a group of staggered men, and, unsurprisingly, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:09 | |
it proved popular. | 0:23:09 | 0:23:10 | |
Kabuki developed into a striking form of theatre, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:21 | |
with highly stylised movement and extravagant costumes. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
The best actors became major city celebrities. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
Kabuki theatres could be raucous places. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:36 | |
The audiences hissed and booed, they leapt onstage, | 0:23:36 | 0:23:40 | |
they started scuffles and riots in the stands. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:43 | |
In rooms like this, | 0:23:43 | 0:23:44 | |
the strict social order of the shogunate | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
could be temporarily and deliriously abandoned. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
The government tried to regulate this exuberant new art form, | 0:23:52 | 0:23:56 | |
but it proved popular even with the samurai, and it's still going today. | 0:23:56 | 0:24:01 | |
Ichikawa Ebizo is the 11th generation | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
in a single dynasty of kabuki performers | 0:24:08 | 0:24:11 | |
that goes back more than 300 years to the Edo period. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
He is also one of the most famous men in Japan. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:24:22 | 0:24:25 | |
MUSIC PLAYS | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
Kabuki was first performed by an all-female cast, but the shogunate, | 0:25:23 | 0:25:28 | |
who disliked its licentious reputation, | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
banned women from the stage. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
They were soon replaced by men in both male and female roles. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
Performances could last all day and attracted every social class. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:58 | |
Young and old, rich and poor rubbed shoulders. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
Lots of what we know today about traditional kabuki | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
comes from the remarkable images that immortalized it. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
Like kabuki, they were a crucial part of Edo's floating world, | 0:28:01 | 0:28:06 | |
and are now synonymous with Japanese culture in general. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
Wood block printing had been practised in Japan | 0:28:12 | 0:28:15 | |
for hundreds of years, | 0:28:15 | 0:28:16 | |
but in the Edo period, | 0:28:16 | 0:28:17 | |
it became possible to make full-colour prints | 0:28:17 | 0:28:20 | |
for the first time. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:21 | |
They became hugely successful. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
They were very common and usually very cheap... | 0:28:26 | 0:28:28 | |
..but they are now the best-known images in Japanese art. | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
Kazuo Watanabe is a woodcut artist. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
He has been making prints for 50 years | 0:28:44 | 0:28:47 | |
and uses the same methods pioneered in 17th-century Edo. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:51 | |
How did you start as an Ukiyo-e print maker in the first place? | 0:28:52 | 0:28:58 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:28:58 | 0:29:01 | |
Woodcuts were bought and sold around Edo in their thousands, | 0:30:20 | 0:30:23 | |
and many focused on the floating world. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
The Japanese even called them Ukiyo-e, | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
pictures of the floating world. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:35 | |
And no artist captured it better than Kitagawa Utamaro. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:42 | |
Utamaro is one of the great enigmas in art. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:50 | |
His pictures may be world famous, | 0:30:50 | 0:30:52 | |
but we know virtually nothing about the man who made them. | 0:30:52 | 0:30:55 | |
We don't know when he was born, we know nothing about his background. | 0:30:55 | 0:30:59 | |
He's mentioned in no official records. | 0:30:59 | 0:31:01 | |
He left behind no letters, no diaries, no personal documents. | 0:31:01 | 0:31:06 | |
Like the floating world, Utamaro thrived in the half light. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:10 | |
One thing, however, seems likely - | 0:31:13 | 0:31:15 | |
Utamaro spent plenty of time in Edo's red light district. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:19 | |
A third of all of his pictures are of the city's sex workers. | 0:31:21 | 0:31:25 | |
Utamaro's fascination with the women of Edo | 0:31:32 | 0:31:34 | |
is evident in a book he published in 1788, | 0:31:34 | 0:31:38 | |
called The Poem Of The Pillow. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:40 | |
It consisted of 12 salacious images. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:45 | |
This is a rare, early copy | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
containing the original Utamaro prints, | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
and I've come to see my favourite. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:52 | |
This picture depicts a man and a woman | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
kissing upstairs in a teahouse. | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
We know it's upstairs | 0:32:00 | 0:32:02 | |
because the leaves of a camellia tree are peeking out, | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
almost eavesdropping, over the balcony. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
There's some suggestion that the characters are already having sex. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:13 | |
On the fan, there's a poem that reads, | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
"Its beak caught firmly in the clam shell, | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
"the snipe cannot escape of an autumn evening." | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
Fortunately, perhaps unfortunately, | 0:32:23 | 0:32:26 | |
we can neither see the beak nor the clam shell. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
But you know what I find so seductive about this image | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
is what ISN'T shown. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
We can't, for instance, see the faces of this couple. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:41 | |
We have to imagine who they are. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:43 | |
It's the details that are so irresistible. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
The curve of her buttocks. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:51 | |
The nape of her neck, | 0:32:51 | 0:32:53 | |
which at the time was considered more sexual even than the genitals. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:58 | |
Her hair standing up on end. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:00 | |
His left hand touching her shoulder. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
Her left hand touching his chin. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
Phew! | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
But, I tell you, if you look closer, | 0:33:08 | 0:33:10 | |
there is something truly remarkable in this picture. | 0:33:10 | 0:33:13 | |
Right here, half hidden by her hair, is an eye, his eye, | 0:33:13 | 0:33:18 | |
looking at her, or perhaps it's looking at us. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:22 | |
Now, I have no evidence for this whatsoever, | 0:33:22 | 0:33:24 | |
but I wonder, I just wonder, | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
whether that is Utamaro himself, staring at us across the centuries. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:32 | |
Utamaro was a master of understatement. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
But not all his images showed such restraint. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:42 | |
Erotic images were popular with both men and women | 0:33:47 | 0:33:50 | |
at every level of society in Japan. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:53 | |
We might see them as vaguely pornographic today, | 0:33:53 | 0:33:56 | |
but the term wouldn't have been understood in 18th-century Edo. | 0:33:56 | 0:33:59 | |
They were called shunga, | 0:34:04 | 0:34:06 | |
which literally meant spring pictures, | 0:34:06 | 0:34:09 | |
and they celebrated intimacy and sexual pleasure | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
in imaginative and often explicit detail. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:15 | |
But the floating world was not the only subject of wood block printing. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:23 | |
In the 1850s, Hiroshige made 100 views | 0:34:27 | 0:34:30 | |
of the great city of Edo itself. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:32 | |
They capture its shop fronts, its teeming streets... | 0:34:34 | 0:34:38 | |
..its waterways and its coast. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:44 | |
The images themselves are breathtaking. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:48 | |
The inventiveness, the dynamism, the wit | 0:34:50 | 0:34:54 | |
and the irrepressible beauty. | 0:34:54 | 0:34:56 | |
Hiroshige, Utamaro | 0:35:00 | 0:35:02 | |
and the other printmakers of Edo had perfected | 0:35:02 | 0:35:05 | |
a remarkable Japanese art form, | 0:35:05 | 0:35:08 | |
but they'd also established the basis of a new visual grammar, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:12 | |
bold, graphic, economical, | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
and it wouldn't be long before their style caught on around the world. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:19 | |
In the mid-19th century, | 0:35:24 | 0:35:25 | |
Japanese trade routes began to open | 0:35:25 | 0:35:28 | |
and their goods began to be sent across the seas. | 0:35:28 | 0:35:31 | |
Kimonos, fans, writing paper, | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
porcelain and pottery, lacquerware and, | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
of course, countless ukiyo-e prints soon flooded the West, | 0:35:38 | 0:35:42 | |
and the West was astonished. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:45 | |
European artists were impressed by ukiyo-e prints. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:52 | |
They turned up in Manet's backgrounds... | 0:35:53 | 0:35:56 | |
..and Monet's foregrounds. | 0:35:58 | 0:35:59 | |
Vincent van Gogh was so inspired by Hiroshige | 0:36:01 | 0:36:04 | |
that he copied this image of Edo, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
and so Japanese innovations helped shape modern art as we know it. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
The people of Edo had achieved something really rather significant. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:19 | |
They had invented a culture that, for the first time, | 0:36:19 | 0:36:22 | |
seemed distinctly Japanese, | 0:36:22 | 0:36:25 | |
and one that then went on to influence the rest of the world. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
But as Japan changed the West, so the West changed Japan. | 0:36:35 | 0:36:40 | |
Previously isolated for hundreds of years, | 0:36:43 | 0:36:45 | |
traditional Japanese society now seemed out of step with modern life. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:50 | |
The rule of the samurai and their closed borders was coming to an end. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
From the 1860s, | 0:36:56 | 0:36:58 | |
Japan would discard much of its centuries-old culture | 0:36:58 | 0:37:01 | |
and aim instead to become a modern, industrial nation. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
As a statement of intent, the city of Edo would be rebranded. | 0:37:06 | 0:37:10 | |
Japan's capital was both new and old. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
It was essentially still the city of Edo. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
Same site, same buildings, many of the same residents. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
But it was now reactivated with a new identity and a new name. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:45 | |
From the 13th of September, 1868, we would know it as Tokyo. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:53 | |
It was in Tokyo where these Western aspirations | 0:37:53 | 0:37:56 | |
first took physical form, | 0:37:56 | 0:37:58 | |
and most noticeably, in architecture. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
At the end of the 19th century, | 0:38:08 | 0:38:10 | |
European-looking buildings began to appear on the city streets. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:13 | |
The Ministry of Justice could have been transplanted from Paris. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
And the city's neo-Baroque train station | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
seems to better belong in Amsterdam. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:26 | |
But the most striking anomaly was the Crown Prince's residence, | 0:38:29 | 0:38:33 | |
completed in 1909. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
This is Akasaka Palace. | 0:38:37 | 0:38:39 | |
Its architect, Tokuma Katayama, | 0:38:39 | 0:38:41 | |
spent a year travelling through Europe, | 0:38:41 | 0:38:43 | |
studying the great royal residences of Germany, France and Britain. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
And with this building, I'm sure you'll agree, | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
he's channelling the spirit of Buckingham Palace. | 0:38:50 | 0:38:53 | |
It is, if such a thing is possible, even more regal inside. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
The grand staircase is made out of Carraran marble from Italy | 0:39:05 | 0:39:09 | |
and Languedoc marble from France. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:11 | |
And the vast state rooms upstairs are overflowing with decoration. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:22 | |
There are paintings done in the European manner. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
And the chandeliers, | 0:39:29 | 0:39:30 | |
which each contain 7,000 pieces and weigh almost a tonne, | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
were specially shipped in from France. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
If I were taken into this building blindfolded, | 0:39:39 | 0:39:41 | |
and not told where I was, | 0:39:41 | 0:39:43 | |
I am pretty sure I would never guess that it was in Japan. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:48 | |
Walking through this palace, | 0:39:48 | 0:39:50 | |
if anything, it feels like I'm in Versailles. | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
A strange alter ego of Versailles, but that was the point. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
This building, and many others like it in Tokyo, | 0:39:57 | 0:40:00 | |
were part of an attempt to represent Japan as, well, a European power. | 0:40:00 | 0:40:07 | |
It was a brazen act of cultural appropriation. | 0:40:07 | 0:40:10 | |
Akasaka Palace ended up costing a huge 5.1 million yen. | 0:40:12 | 0:40:17 | |
It was deemed too extravagant even for the Crown Prince, | 0:40:17 | 0:40:21 | |
and it spent much of the 20th century uninhabited. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
Outside the palace, Tokyo was changing in other ways. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:39 | |
A huge programme of construction and industrialization was under way. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:46 | |
Railways, trams and trunk roads transformed the fabric of the city. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:51 | |
And then it was transformed yet further | 0:40:51 | 0:40:53 | |
by a series of very Japanese disasters. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:56 | |
On the 1st of September, 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake struck Tokyo, | 0:40:59 | 0:41:04 | |
killing 142,000 people and obliterating much of the city. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:09 | |
Tokyo had barely recovered when it was torn apart again. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
During the Second World War, the US Air Force | 0:41:18 | 0:41:20 | |
embarked on an aerial bombing campaign against Japan. | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
67 cities were targeted, 500,000 people were killed, | 0:41:24 | 0:41:29 | |
and more than half of Tokyo was destroyed. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
As Japan rebuilt itself once again, | 0:41:37 | 0:41:39 | |
it embraced a new kind of supercharged modernity, | 0:41:39 | 0:41:43 | |
where progress with a capital P was all that mattered. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:48 | |
Between 1945 and 1963, | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
the population of Tokyo grew from 3.5 million to over 10 million, | 0:41:51 | 0:41:56 | |
as increasingly people deserted the countryside | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
and moved to the city. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:01 | |
At the same time, the nation experienced | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
unprecedented economic growth. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:06 | |
And yet, in the process of remodelling Tokyo, | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
many were left behind, | 0:42:10 | 0:42:12 | |
stuck in the cracks between the shiny developments. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
And these cracks just about survive | 0:42:19 | 0:42:22 | |
in a small part of Shinjuku called Golden Gai. | 0:42:22 | 0:42:26 | |
Golden Gai was rebuilt after the war and soon became a world of its own, | 0:42:33 | 0:42:38 | |
a warren of alleys and bars. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:40 | |
This was the floating world of modern Tokyo, | 0:42:40 | 0:42:43 | |
a place Utamaro might have felt at home. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:47 | |
And in 1961, a modern-day Utamaro stepped into it - Daido Moriyama. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:53 | |
The founding father of Japanese street photography. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:02 | |
He was 23 when he first came to Tokyo | 0:43:02 | 0:43:05 | |
and found a day job as a camera assistant, | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
but at night, he was sucked into the darkness of Shinjuku. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:12 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
Moriyama's methods are simple. | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
He wanders up and down the streets of Shinjuku, | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
ducking into narrow alleys and dark corners, looking in every direction. | 0:43:46 | 0:43:50 | |
And as he goes, | 0:43:50 | 0:43:52 | |
he uses a small, portable camera to take snap, after snap, after snap. | 0:43:52 | 0:43:56 | |
Moriyama's early photographs | 0:44:02 | 0:44:03 | |
captured the rootless and hedonistic inhabitants | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
of Tokyo's underbelly. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
But increasingly, he subverted his medium. | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
In 1972, in his classic work Farewell Photography, | 0:44:14 | 0:44:18 | |
his portraits of the city were so blurred, grainy | 0:44:18 | 0:44:22 | |
and uncomposed that they were almost illegible. | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
Do you find the city particularly exciting | 0:44:27 | 0:44:31 | |
at certain times of the day or night? | 0:44:31 | 0:44:33 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:44:34 | 0:44:38 | |
If any one photograph captures Moriyama's work, it is this one, | 0:46:59 | 0:47:04 | |
made in 1971. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:05 | |
An unkempt stray dog glances back at the photographer | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
in the winter sunshine. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:12 | |
The dog is surely a proxy for Moriyama himself, | 0:47:12 | 0:47:16 | |
a loner scavenging the streets for scraps. | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
But it is also perhaps a symbol of Japan, | 0:47:19 | 0:47:23 | |
a country that hadn't yet found its identity | 0:47:23 | 0:47:26 | |
in the turbulence of the 20th century. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:28 | |
And yet, in the following years, | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
Japan raced yet further into the future. | 0:47:38 | 0:47:40 | |
The economic miracle that had begun in the 1960s | 0:47:41 | 0:47:44 | |
reached its peak in the 1980s, | 0:47:44 | 0:47:47 | |
and the country became the second largest economy in the world. | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
Tokyo was the motor of these changes, | 0:47:53 | 0:47:55 | |
and was rebuilt and redeveloped | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
at a relentless rate. | 0:47:57 | 0:47:58 | |
But though its eyes were firmly focused on the future, | 0:47:59 | 0:48:02 | |
the culture of the city remained haunted by the past. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:06 | |
In 1987, the classic anime film, Akira, was released. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
It begins with an all-too-familiar scene - | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
Tokyo being razed to the ground. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:37 | |
The story that follows has all the necessary ingredients | 0:48:45 | 0:48:48 | |
of modern science fiction - | 0:48:48 | 0:48:50 | |
post apocalyptic dystopia, government conspiracy, | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
and children with superpowers. | 0:48:54 | 0:48:56 | |
It consists of 160,000 hand-drawn images and features 327 colours, | 0:48:58 | 0:49:04 | |
50 of which were specially created for the film. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:07 | |
But the star of the show is neo-Tokyo itself, | 0:49:10 | 0:49:14 | |
a dazzling setting for dreams and nightmares. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:17 | |
In the following year, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:22 | |
another film revisited the wartime destruction of Japan's cities. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
Grave Of The Fireflies is a landmark in animation history. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:37 | |
It tells the tragic story of two siblings' struggle to survive | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
during the final months of the Second World War. | 0:49:41 | 0:49:43 | |
The film was directed by Isao Takahata, | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
one of the co-founders of Studio Ghibli, | 0:49:52 | 0:49:55 | |
and it drew on his own memories of the war. | 0:49:55 | 0:49:57 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
Now in his eighties, | 0:51:42 | 0:51:43 | |
Takahata has published a book about the connection | 0:51:43 | 0:51:46 | |
between the sequential art of early Japanese hand scrolls | 0:51:46 | 0:51:49 | |
and anime, which he sees as belonging | 0:51:49 | 0:51:52 | |
to the same narrative art tradition. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:54 | |
Wow. | 0:51:56 | 0:51:57 | |
So, this is a fire tearing down the city? | 0:51:59 | 0:52:02 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:52:04 | 0:52:06 | |
When you look at a scroll like this, | 0:52:20 | 0:52:22 | |
do you feel like you're looking at the work | 0:52:22 | 0:52:24 | |
of people in the same business as you? | 0:52:24 | 0:52:26 | |
The great anime films were just part of a broader blossoming | 0:52:53 | 0:52:57 | |
of Japan's creative industries, | 0:52:57 | 0:52:59 | |
which were born out of distinctly Japanese urban experiences, | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
but spoke to the wider world. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:05 | |
Since the 1980s, Japan, and Tokyo in particular, | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
has become a creative hub for food, fashion, film, consumer electronics, | 0:53:12 | 0:53:19 | |
computer games and many other forms of popular culture. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:22 | |
Take a pick of a recent craze or fad - | 0:53:22 | 0:53:25 | |
it's likely to have originated here. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:27 | |
Tokyo's designers have, together, challenged Paris | 0:53:33 | 0:53:36 | |
as a world leader in fashion. | 0:53:36 | 0:53:38 | |
Lifestyle brands have tackled the problems of urban living | 0:53:43 | 0:53:46 | |
and gone on to conquer the world. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:48 | |
And its pop culture has attracted millions of fans | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
and built a vast, international audience. | 0:53:57 | 0:54:00 | |
In many of these areas, | 0:54:04 | 0:54:05 | |
the great city of Tokyo absorbed the most modern fashions, | 0:54:05 | 0:54:09 | |
remade them in thrilling ways, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:11 | |
and then exported them back to the world. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:13 | |
This dizzying, high-speed, | 0:54:17 | 0:54:19 | |
urban aesthetic has also influenced Japan's artists. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:23 | |
They have derived inspiration from the city, | 0:54:28 | 0:54:31 | |
and from the popular culture it produced. | 0:54:31 | 0:54:33 | |
But of all of them, none better captures the zeitgeist | 0:54:36 | 0:54:40 | |
than an 87-year-old woman called Yayoi Kusama. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:44 | |
TRANSLATION: | 0:54:44 | 0:54:48 | |
Kusama has been creating her own brand of pop art since the 1960s, | 0:55:02 | 0:55:07 | |
resulting in a psychedelic array of popular, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
but deeply personal imagery. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
But Kusama's most celebrated installations | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
are her mirror rooms... | 0:55:25 | 0:55:27 | |
..small, dark chambers covered on all sides in reflective surfaces... | 0:55:28 | 0:55:33 | |
..illuminated only by twinkling LEDs | 0:55:34 | 0:55:38 | |
and transformed into infinite indoor galaxies. | 0:55:38 | 0:55:42 | |
You can understand why this art has delighted people around the world. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:49 | |
It's like... I don't know, | 0:55:49 | 0:55:51 | |
it's almost like falling into a kaleidoscope, | 0:55:51 | 0:55:53 | |
or stepping onto a sci-fi stage set. | 0:55:53 | 0:55:57 | |
But you know what, more than anything else, | 0:55:57 | 0:55:59 | |
this piece reminds me of? | 0:55:59 | 0:56:01 | |
It reminds me of the city. | 0:56:01 | 0:56:04 | |
It reminds me of an almost infinite metropolis, | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
glittering away in the night. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:09 | |
Over the centuries, cities have inspired | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
some of Japan's greatest art, | 0:56:22 | 0:56:24 | |
but they are, themselves, creations, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:27 | |
dynamic, complex and often beautiful. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
This is a story of Japan's urban imagination | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
and how three great cities built its art and culture. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:39 | |
In Kyoto, the Japanese mastered beauty and elegance. | 0:56:43 | 0:56:47 | |
In Edo, they found their own, often mischievous, voice. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
And in Tokyo, they turned destruction into creation. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:59 | |
And in the process, | 0:57:01 | 0:57:02 | |
they helped define a country as it relentlessly searched for itself. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:06 | |
Cities are engines of cultural change | 0:57:10 | 0:57:14 | |
because they throw people together, | 0:57:14 | 0:57:16 | |
to compete and collaborate and innovate. | 0:57:16 | 0:57:20 | |
It's the case around the world, of course, | 0:57:20 | 0:57:22 | |
but I can't think of many countries | 0:57:22 | 0:57:24 | |
that are more defined by their cities than Japan. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:27 | |
In the final episode, | 0:57:40 | 0:57:41 | |
I'll be venturing into the most intimate spaces in Japan - | 0:57:41 | 0:57:45 | |
its homes. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:46 | |
I'll explore how, in Japan, the house became a work of art. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:52 | |
Guided by the spirit of the craftsmen who made it, | 0:57:52 | 0:57:55 | |
and the rich traditions that developed within its walls, | 0:57:55 | 0:57:58 | |
the Japanese house went on to transform our lives in the West. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:02 |