Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery

The Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery, in Japanese Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan, is a 1926 painting gallery in the Meiji Jingu Gaien park in Tokyo's Shinjuku ward. The symmetrical granite building with its central dome was deliberately built as a Western-style monumental hall to underline the modernisation narrative of Emperor Meiji. Inside hang 80 large-format paintings retelling key episodes of the Meiji era: the 1868 Restoration, the transfer of the capital from Kyoto to Tokyo, the proclamation of the Meiji Constitution, military campaigns, and the emperor's funeral in 1912. The pictures were produced by 39 leading Japanese artists of the time, 40 in the Western-influenced yoga style and 40 in the Japanese nihonga manner. A visit pairs well with a walk along the ginkgo-lined avenue of the outer shrine park, and the gallery itself offers an unusually unified visual narrative of Japan in the 19th century.