Manhoru

Manhoru by Thomas Couderc gathers a collection of Japanese manhole covers.
Captured by the author during a trip to Japan, or gleaned later from the internet, this unpublished corpus invites us to discover a subtle art form often ignored in Europe, and particularly in France where access to the sewers is constrained by standardized cast iron plates with sadly and exclusively functional motifs.

In Japan, manhole covers (manhorukaba in Japanese) play the sign and tell us stories. The result of a singular political decision, these manhole covers tell a superlative territorial story: glorious past or successful present, mascots and local legends, fauna, flora or remarkable monuments…

Put together for the first time in a single collection, these everyday objects reveal the exceptional graphic universe of the Japanese archipelago.