Curated by Aurora Canepari and Benedetta Donato

The Edoardo Chiossone Museum of Oriental Art in Genoa hosts Tokyo Tsukiji , the reportage made by Nicola Tanzini (Pisa, 1964) inside Tsukiji , the largest fish market in the world.

The exhibition, curated by Aurora Canepari, director of the Edoardo Chiossone Oriental Art Museum and Benedetta Donato, curator of the editorial project, presents a selection of 28 photographs that constitute a real story in images of one of the most iconic places in the capital Japanese restaurant, even considered sacred by Japanese restaurateurs, which has seen its fame grow to the point of becoming one of the major tourist attractions in Tokyo, unfortunately no longer open to visitors.

In fact, on 6 October 2018, 83 years after its opening, the Tsukiji market was definitively closed to make room for the 2020 Olympics and located several kilometers further east, in the Toyosu district.

The fish market has been present in the capital since its foundation dating back to the early seventeenth century, expressly wanted by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu.

In the history of Japanese art, it is often the subject of ukiyoe polychrome prints, an artistic expression par excellence of 17th century urban society, where it becomes a symbol of prosperity and industriousness. Over the centuries it has changed place and shape, supporting the transformations of the urban structure of the capital, but always confirming itself as an indicator of commercial liveliness, of the fishing industry and of Japanese eating habits.

In over two years of work, Nicola Tanzini has chosen to capture a little-known side of Tsukiji with his shots, in the moment of dismissal of the activities that precede the closure, when everything finally stops and the operators can suspend the work, started before the 'Sunrise.

The entire reportage by Nicola Tanzini is contained in the homonymous volume (Contrasto; pages 200; over 130 images, in Italian, English, French and Japanese, by Benedetta Donato), divided into eight sections, corresponding to the various phases identified from curatorship, ranging from depopulation of the market to cleaning operations, from portraits of sellers to moments dedicated to refreshment and relaxation.

The Genoese exhibition puts in dialogue photographic prints that portray an important part of Japanese culture and tradition, with the collection of the Edoardo Chiossone Museum of Oriental Art, considered the most important in Italy and among the most important in Europe.

Through this reinterpretation, visual arts and plastic arts, coming from different and apparently distant periods, contaminate and meet in a continuum, underlining the commitment of the structure in the enhancement and dissemination of practices, customs and traditions of the ancient and contemporary.