Windows To Another World

The Lady Lever Art Gallery will have a Japanese touch thanks to its latest exhibition, on loan from a Wirral art collector. REBEKKA O’GRADY visits to find out more.

- Rebekka O'grady

LONG before the bright lights of Tokyo, there was a city that was just as vibrant and contemporary. Edo, the predecessor of Japan’s capital, was a lively metropolis on the brink of change - a wooden city of a million people that had a buzzing, exciting pop culture 150 years before the 1960s took the style as its own.

It’s a culture that during the 19th century was documented in colourful Ukiyo-e wood block prints - beautiful hand-crafted images that really do tell a thousand words. Everything from urban celebrities, actors and sports champions, to fashion icons, politics and villains were presented in extraordinary detail – stories that we can all now enjoy thanks to a new exhibition at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight.

Opening on May 26th and running until September 4th, Edo Pop: Japanese Prints, will feature a series of these vibrant images, all on loan from the private collection of art historian and writer, Frank Milner. Frank, who lives in Wallasey, has been collecting Japanese prints for over 40 years, after being inspired by an exhibition at the V&A in London.

‘I saw the Floating World exhibition in 1973 and I thought it was marvellous. It was the first time I’d seen Japanese prints in such quantity. They’re best looked at in that way. Well, that’s how I see it as I now have them all around me.’