01/06/2026
In anticipation of tomorrow’s opening of Kikuji Kawada’s exhibition at Japan House London.
Born in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1933, Kikuji Kawada rose to prominence on the strength of his poetic, symbolically charged photography. This diverse and prolific body of work may be seen as articulating Kawada’s evolving appraisal of Japanese national identity, and its historical trajectory in the turbulent post-war period.
As a co-founder of the VIVO collective in 1959, Kawada shared a creative vision of photography’s expressive, individualistic potential with other members including Eikoh Hosoe, Ikko Narahara, Shōmei Tōmatsu and Akira Satō. Kawada held his first solo exhibition in the year of VIVO’s formation, before exhibiting The Map (Chizu) in 1961 at Fuji Photo Salon in Tokyo. Today, The Map is recognised as one of the most important examples of Japan’s unique post-war photobook culture, incorporating text, abstracted surfaces, and fragmentary images to compose a complex and meditative elegy to pre-war Japan.
