Picturing Tokyo’s Modern Girl: Moga at the Meguro Gajoen

Join us for a captivating virtual discussion unpacking the motif of Tokyo’s modern girl (moga) in the interwar period—a time of excitement and anxiety as Japanese citizens negotiated their relationship to modernity and globalization. The moderated conversation expands on our current exhibition Moga: Modern Women & Daughters in 1930s Japan, using a selection of paintings from the noted collection of the Meguro Gajoen entertainment complex to reflect popular tastes of the time.

Moderated by University of Chicago Associate Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Chelsea Foxwell, the program features panelists Minori Egashira (curatorial consultant and PhD candidate at the University of Chicago), Alison Miller (author, scholar of Asian art, and Assistant Professor of Art History at Sewanee: The University of the South), Chinghsin Wu (scholar of Japanese and Chinese art and Assistant Professor of Art History at Rutgers University). In Picturing Tokyo’s Modern Girl: Moga at the Meguro Gajoen the panelists examine artistic depictions of the urbane modern girl and how they transcend the national aesthetics of the era.