Living Worlds
Ginza at dusk in 1882, a crowd in kimono and bowler hats looking up at the first electric street lamp beside brick colonnades, gas lamps and a horse tram.

1840–1890 · Tokyo, 1 November 1882

First Light

Tonight the street is brighter than the moon.

The law of First Light

Tonight the street is brighter than the moon.

On 1 November 1882, Japan's first electric street light, an arc lamp, was switched on in Ginza. Crowds came every night to see it.

A young engineer kneeling at the foot of the arc-lamp pole checking its cable.

A life in First Light · composite, based on the record

An engineer, twenty-five

He checks the cable at the foot of the pole while the whole street looks up at the light he helped to switch on.

Meanwhile, in the same age

Steam and light

A double-hulled voyaging canoe with pandanus sails on the open Pacific at dusk.

Which world will you live in?