The spirit of the gagaku, tracks of which we find dating more than 1300 years, expresses at the same time a worship of the strength which checks the movement of the universe and that of the man in its individuality. When Pierre BOULEZ invites the set of gagaku, in March, 1995, in the Cité de la Musique, the opportunity is offered to him to express in front of public French its curiosity for this mysterious and delicate art. This interest moreover joined its work of composer: his work is partially inspired by the gagaku, whether it is by indirect correspondences on the conception and the extension of time, or by instrumental textures. It is exceptional to hear this music outside the Japanese borders; to discover it, protected so by the musicians and the dancers of the troop of the Emperor of Japan, which did not occur in Paris for 42 years, in the Big room Pierre-Boulez, is an event not to be missed.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

As the ice age came to an end shortly after the beginning of the Jomon era, Japan enjoyed a mild climate where hunting, fishing and gathering activities developed. The appearance of pottery marks the beginning of this epoch, which takes its name from the motifs obtained by strings printing. The first section of the exhibition presents 10,000 years of evolutionary plastic beauty through various types of Jomon pottery motifs: nail, finger, string or shell marks, clay application, engraved drawings...

On the occasion of the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration, this exhibition will highlight the many upheavals linked to the Meiji era (1868-1912), which was an unprecedented revolution for Japan and the world.

This exhibition will address different aspects of the modernization of Japan and the internationalization of artistic production through different artistic techniques. It will gather, among other things, examples of goldsmiths, partitions, photographs, textiles, paintings, bronzes and ceramics in order to illustrate the mutations in society as a whole and in art in particular.

The exhibition “Treasures de Kyoto” presents one of the major schools of Japanese art, the Rinpa decorative current, which appeared in the early seventeenth century and whose production continues until today.

This presentation, presented as part of the Japonismes 2018 season: Souls in Resonance, offers the exceptional opportunity to discover during the first four weeks of the exhibition the “National Treasury” Wind Gods and Thunder of Tawaraya Sotatsu preserved in the Kennin-ji Temple in Kyoto and only visible on very rare occasions. The exhibition presents the extraordinary variety of Rinpa works, showing that the artists of this current have not only devoted themselves to painting, but also to engraving, to decoration of ceramic, wood and lacquer objects.

Historic cradle of Japan, the city was capital from 710 to 784. Its Buddhist temples still preserve the undisputed masterpieces of medieval Japanese sculpture. For the first time loaned outside Japan, two guardians, national treasures, and a wooden effigy of the bodhisattva Jizô, classified as “important cultural property”, are presented in France.

The recent acquisition of a large album of Tokaido prints belonging to Victor SEGALEN (1878-1919), a poet, novelist and sinologist, is an opportunity to present this route for the first time to the public around which numerous famous prints are congregated. Many are preserved in the museum. The album of the «last Tokaido» concludes a long tradition. Numerous Japanese artists have illustrated, in various forms, totally or partially, the major stages chanting the road that connects Kyoto, imperial capital, to Edo (Tokyo), capital of the shogun.