Acrobats in Japan - Prints from the Edo period to the Meiji era

Exhibition catalogue "Street performers in Japan. Woodblock prints from the Edo and Meiji periods", presented at the Museum of Asian Arts in Nice (28 February – 28 July 2026).

From the Edo period to the Meiji era, Japan celebrated the performing arts: acrobats, monkey trainers and trained animals feature in the prints of Hokusai, Yoshiharu and Chikanobu.

Featuring over eighty works from the prestigious collection of Jeanne-Yvonne and Gérard Borg, Saltimbanques au Japon explores the world of misemono, those popular and ephemeral festivals that enlivened urban life.

Both admired and marginalised, street performers are privileged witnesses to a Japan in the midst of transformation, at a cultural crossroads.

Between tradition and modernity, from Edo to Tokyo, this book invites the reader on a unique journey into a world of curiosity, inventiveness and virtuosity.

Contents
Introduction
Street performers from Japan and beyond.
From practice to image, from one world to another
Adrien Bossard

Collecting the Circus and Art
Gérard and Jeanne-Yvonne Borg

With the Ocean as a Horizon.
Acrobats, street performers and jugglers from Japan to the West
Pascal Jacob

The Misemono: A Socio-Cultural Phenomenon in 19th-Century Japan
Line Langlois-Deschamps

Hayatake Torakichi
Rhiannon Paget

WORKS
The Curious Activity of Monkey Trainers
Sairei and Shukusai. Urban Celebrations and Festivals
The Lively World of Street Performers
Western Circuses in Japan

English texts