When news broke that Tokyo would host the Olympic Games in 2020, Japanese photographer Takashi Kano set off to capture the essence of the city in phases leading up to the monumental event. Kano made his way around Tokyo capturing different sites and neighbourhoods until in the end, only Shibuya Crossing remained. Kano resolved that despite the city's vastness and boundless eccentricities, nowhere in Tokyo is quite as iconic as Shibuya’s beloved Scramble.
As an intersection where people from all walks of life pass through, the Shibuya Scramble is as much a metaphorical crossroad as it is a physical one. If you look up the hashtag ‘#shibuyacrossing’ on social media, grids are now dominated by people posing in face masks, but Kano’s exhibition is a collection of his photography where people are mask-free and smiling broadly – a hopeful reminder from pre-coronavirus days of better things to come.