Araki exhibition in Paris’s Guimet museum in 2016 was the biggest Araki show organised in France and the first exhibition of a major photographer in this institution dedicated to « Asian Arts ». Moreover, Guimet museum holds one of the finest collections in the world of old Japanese photographs from Meiji period and this exhibition also encapsulated a selection of “ «Yokohama shashin”», - 19 th century hand-colored photographs from Japan - presented as a dialog with Araki’s works. The critic and public reaction was enthusiastic but we will discuss here if is it’s possible to watch an exhibition of Japanese photographs without falling into exoticism or Japonism and how we can find from this confrontation of old and new representations more than superficial similarities…