Tales of Old Tokyo

Tales of Old Tokyo is a dizzying jumble of quotes, book and newspaper excerpts, woodblock prints, and grainy, mostly black-and-white photos that creates a mosaic of one of the world's greatest cities. By "old" Tokyo, Van Fleet refers to a time period marked by two events. The first is the arrival of the Black Ships, commanded by American naval officer Commodore Perry in the mid-1850s. Perry had orders to open Japanese ports to foreign fleets. Tokyo was a city for centuries before then, but it was called Edo until the end of the Tokugawa shogunate era, a decade after Perry's demands were met. The second event that marks the end of Van Fleet's "old" Tokyo is the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.