Contact with modern Western culture in the second half of the nineteenth century gave Japanese music a new start. The military bands on Commodore Perry’s black ships gave loud notice that Japan’s long period of isolation was at an end, and the English lessons and hymn-singing of American missionaries heralded the advent of a new age. With the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the new government proactively incorporated Western music into Japan’s school curricula as an attempt to build up capabilities in music appropriate for a modern nation. For the next hundred and fifty years, notwithstanding occasional sidesteps imposed by political climate, modern Japanese music has progressed in step with other arts and culture genres to construct the flourishing culture of music that we see today. This exhibition follows that historical progress to trace the development of modern Japanese music over those hundred and fifty eventful years. The core of the exhibits comes from the Meiji Gakuin University Archives of Modern Japanese Music. These exhibits are augmented by precious materials loaned by archives, museums, and private collectors throughout Japan. The result is a multi-dimensional and dynamic presentation of the music-focused cultural history of Japan since the nation came out of isolation.