"This is our participation in the virtual realization of a reality that will never exist.

If the Showa era had continued, the year 2025 would have marked its centennial. Coincidentally, this is the year that the Osaka Expo, which symbolized the Showa era, will return to Japan.

Now that the Heisei era has ended and the Reiwa era has begun, why do we dare to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Showa era?

The reason is that the Showa era continues to be a constant and universal inspiration for some of the trends in visual creation on a global scale. In the twenty-first century, it is sweeping the visual fields of the world with increasing fervor.

One of the best examples is Cyberpunk. The visual appeal of City pop and Vaporwave as well as Japanese artists with "night" in their name like YOASOBI, Yorushika, Zutomayo were also influenced by it.

Things like decadent dystopian designs featuring neon or pastel colors in hues of cyan, pink and purple, or ruins rising in a hazy city under disquieting clouds, are just a few examples.

This trend is often synonymous with "80's revival". As part of this NEWTRO cultural revival, many art and design expressions that embody the atmosphere of Showa Japan are appearing simultaneously around the world.

Air Corridor Tokyo, where the Metropolitan Expressway crawls through the air between skyscrapers. The neon city that never sleeps and the rain-soaked asphalt reflecting it. Traces of repeated extensions of the urban landscape through haphazard additions of poverty and affluence. Abnormally distended pipes, superfluous air conditioning units, and gas meters. Square and round capsule hotels, aluminum alloy subway cars.

All of these are sublimated and overly deformed fantasies that, in the modern sense, are virtual reality itself.

Digital natives around the world are reliving the near future through their retinas, a future that will never come.

The slang term エモい emoi (emotional or nostalgic) can be used to describe the virtual Japan that continues to inspire nostalgia for generations to come.

In other words, "SHOWA NIPPON" is inexplicably emoi.

It's a nostalgia that continues to update itself in this day and age. It's connected to an image of Japan that will forever be out of reach. Participation in the meta-narrative virtual realization of "Shōwa Centennial" as a world line that only exists in the works of the artists assembled here.

This is the true value of this exhibition as well as its true meaning. And it's up to you to make it real."

Translated from the press release