CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/11/2024

Early 20th-century Japanese graphic design shines in 'Songs for Modern Japan'

The years 1900 to 1950 were transformational around the world, and particularly in Japan. The culture shifted from traditional to modern, a war was waged and lost, an empire shattered. Throughout, musicians wrote songs and artists illustrated the sheet music. Published to accompany the exhibition currently on view at MFA Boston, Songs for Modern Japan collects more than 100 of the most beautiful score illustrations for movies, Western jazz, opera and patriotic songs. Pictured here is Kimata Kyoshi’s cover illustration for “Hoshi no nagare ni” (On the Stream of Stars), the most popular Japanese song of early 1948. It was inspired by an October 1946 letter to a newspaper from a jobless woman—repatriated from Manchuria—who became a prostitute to survive.