The artwork above appeared in the cover of the April 2020 issue of the Number 1 Shimbun, the monthly magazine of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. Weeks after it first appeared, the Tokyo Olympic Organising Committee demanded that it be withdrawn from public circulation.
Immediately after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, many began to imagine a physically and conceptually transformed Tokyo. While we may be nowhere near the end of the slow-motion train wreck that is Covid-19, imagining a post-pandemic Japanese society that can benefit citizens is the beginning of revitalization, and hopefully, a more substantial set of transformations.
