At the Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery, “Art Brut 2023 Touring Exhibition ‘Dear Stories: Tales and Talks’” is being held from October 21 to December 24, 2023. Serving as the audio guide navigator for this exhibition is the actor and artist actively making a name of himself, Win Morisaki. Mr. Morisaki, making his first attempt at being an audio guide for an art exhibition, promptly visited the venue and engaged with the art pieces featured in the exhibition, guided by Kaoru Ouchi, this exhibition’s planner and a curator of the gallery.

The Tokyo Artpoint Project, which is a joint project of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture), and (various) nonprofit organizations, in aimed at creating a plethora of artpoints in Tokyo. Since its inception in 2009, the Tokyo Artpoint Project has conducted 45 projects in collaboration with more than 50 organizations.

In this second in our series of interviews with organizations participating in the Tokyo Artpoint Project, we take a look at Shimaclass Kouzushima General Incorporated Association, which runs the HAPPY TURN/Kouzushima art project on the island of Kouzushima in the Pacific Ocean. We interviewed Kei Nakamura and Tomoyo Iijima, both work for secretariat of the project, and Shunsuke Sakurai, a program officer of Arts Council Tokyo.

The Marunouchi Street Gallery is a project that exhibits works by masters of modern sculpture and internationally renowned contemporary artists along Tokyo’s Marunouchi Naka-dori Street. The project began in 1972 under the leadership of Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd. with the aim of enhancing the cultural power of Marunouchi. The individual works are replaced every few years, and the townscape scenery is renewed on a regular basis in conjunction with the neighborhood’s art spots, much to the delight of passersby. For the present article, we interviewed Hiroaki Sakamoto and Yuriko Saito of the Chokoku-no-Mori Art Foundation, who are supervising the project, about its background and aims.

The hotel BnA_WALL opened in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi area in April 2021. Its most distinctive feature is that all 26 of its guestrooms are works of art. Moreover, the common space that houses the café bar features a huge 6-meter square wall extending from the basement, from which the hotel takes its name. We interviewed Yu Tazawa, the co-founder and CEO of BnA Co., Ltd., which operates BnA_WALL. He explained that BnA_WALL is not just a hotel with art, but also a place that continues to support artists in its own unique way.

This series of articles featuring the voices of various art galleries introduces the unique characteristics of each gallery, including how they meet artists, what they look for in their works, and trends in the art market.

The gallerists featured in this series are directors of galleries established over the past few years in Tokyo that are members of the Contemporary Art Dealers Association of Nippon (CADAN). In this installment, we take a look at HAGIWARA PROJECTS, which opened in 2021 not far from the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. In a distinctive space with bare wood walls, this gallery has hosted solo exhibitions of Japanese and international artists of video, painting, and photography. Among the artists that have been featured are Maiko Jinushi, Miho Dohi, Yuta Hayakawa, Shunsuke Imai, Tamotsu Kido, Nobuhiko Nukata, and Zak Prekop. We hear about the gallery’s director Yukari Hagiwara’s proposals for effective ways to market young artists.

Japanese original text: Takashi Shinkawa

Photo: Shu Nakagawa

In our series of columns “Recommending Audio Guide Use,” we interview audio guide producers and others to delve into how to enjoy “listening” to art.

For the second article in the series, the focus is on Listening Art, an audio guide application that allows people to enjoy exhibitions virtually anywhere via their ears. Released by Acoustiguide Japan Ltd. in 2019, the app attracted attention of art lovers after the COVID-19 pandemic caused many art exhibitions to be canceled or postponed. Beginning in the autumn of 2021, the audio guide from the exhibition “Van Gogh and Gauguin: Reality and Imagination” held in 2016 became available for a limited period until the end of April 2022. This has been dubbed a “legendary audio guide.” But what is the back story to this success? We interviewed Satomi Hoshino, who developed the app, Natsumi Uemura, who produced the audio guide for the “Van Gogh and Gauguin,” and Akane Takahashi, who produced the exhibition “Collecting Van Gogh: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Passion for Vincent’s Art,” which has been held in various locations.

Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo (commonly known as TOKAS Hongo) is a place for the creation and dissemination of a wide variety of expressions that take place during the same era. It hosts exhibitions, performances, and various other projects. Since 2001, this building has served as an art space for many artists, although it was an employment agency when first built in 1928. The exhibition “ACT (Artists Contemporary TOKAS) Vol. 4: Approaching to Alternative Images,” running February 5 – March 21, 2022, offered a unique experience of work set against this historical backdrop. We present a report on Daisuke Nakazawa’s work, which focuses on the building’s history and relives the “employment agency.”

The term “public domain” refers to public intellectual property that is not copyrighted. There are art museums around the world that offer open online access to works in their collections. Here, we highlight works that have entered the public domain and redefine the appeal of such collections.

Audio guides have become a standard feature of art galleries and museums. They make the viewing experience more extravagant and enriching. The devices have become increasingly advanced and popular, with the development of applications that feature popular narrators and actors, allowing viewers to listen to guides without having to visit exhibition venues.

In a new series of columns, “Recommending Audio Guide Use,” we will interview audio guide producers and others to delve into how to enjoy “listening” to art. For the first installment, we asked Acoustiguide Japan Ltd., which produces nearly 50 audio guides a year, about how they make their guides and what goes on behind the scenes in their production.

The “Next Tokyo Discovering Team!” series gives insight on the little-known history and culture of various parts of Tokyo, and introduces the deepest ways of enjoying the city as it continues to evolve creatively. In this installment, we present events unfolding in the Honjo Fukagawa area, located on the east side of the Sumida River.

The area is dotted with popular restaurants, art museums and galleries. It is also a crossroads of old and new cultures that retains a downtown atmosphere, where an art project called Books, Rivers, and Towns has been held since 2020. As we toured the programs scattered around the river town with “books” as a guide, what emerged was the memory of a land that has long been layered since the Edo Period. We interviewed four local residents about how the project was launched.

This is a series of visits to gardens in Tokyo featuring photographs by photographer Norihisa Kushibiki and commentary by Miho Tanaka, curator at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Rather than daimyo gardens (those commissioned by daimyo feudal lords), which we introduced in this column in the past, Mukojima-Hyakkaen Gardens was created by a merchant and several literati in Edo (today’s Tokyo). The 10,885 square meters garden, lush with wild flowers and grasses, was filled with as much to see as a large-scale garden and with the passion of the people involved.

A series of articles featuring the voices of gallerists. This column introduces the features of each gallery, how to meet artists, what to look for in their works, and trends in the art market.

The gallerists featured in this series are directors of galleries established in the past few years in Tokyo. They belong to the Contemporary Art Dealers Association of Nippon (CADAN).

This time, we visited 4649, founded in 2018 in Sugamo, Toshima-ku, to interview with its three directors. 4649 is an artist-run space gallery owned and operated by the artists themselves. The three, Yuhei Kobayashi, Shogo Shimizu, and Yu Takamizawa, were born in the 1990s. They present works of different media, such as painting and photography, created by themselves. At the same time, they actively introduce younger artists based overseas.

Japanese original text: Takashi Shinkawa

Photo: Shu Nakagawa

Translation: Kae Shigeno

Talents Tokyo is a program to develop young filmmakers in Asia by providing lectures and workshops. We are presenting interviews with past participants in line with a call for applications (from 5/1-5/31) for the 2022 academic year.

In part two, we speak with Kaori Oda, a finisher of the program in 2015, who is gaining recognition in Japan and abroad for her feature film ARAGANE (2015), which focuses on a coal mine in Bosnia, and Cenote (2017), about an underwater cave in Mexico. Asagi Kimura, the Talents Tokyo Award 2021 winner, says she was influenced by this director.

Talents Tokyo is a program for young people in the Asian region to develop filmmakers and producers organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Arts Council Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture), and the Talents Tokyo Organizing Committee. It is a workshop for participants to polish their own projects and acquire skills so they can be active on the world stage. In line with a call for participants (from May 1-31) for the 2022 year, we interviewed Asagi Kimura, winner of the Talents Tokyo Award 2021, to talk about her experience under Talents Tokyo. Part two features Kaori Oda, a finisher of the program in 2015, whose documentary films Aragane (2015) and Cenote (2017) are gaining recognition both in Japan and abroad.

A museum where visitors can encounter mammals, fish, insects, and other creatures opened in Tokyo’s Ginza in July 2021. Its name is Zukan Museum Ginza. Living creatures that inhabit every corner of the globe, from the northern to southern hemispheres, appear in spaces that reproduce their environment. This is a report on an unprecedented and new museum experience made possible by technology and creativity.

A new theater, THEATRE for ALL (hereinafter referred to as TfA), was established in February 2021 midst of the severe situation of COVID-19. Its stage is not near a train station nor inside a shopping mall. It is in a place easily accessible from anywhere — yes, on the Internet. This article introduces the efforts behind TfA, an online theater created with “accessibility” in mind, allowing anyone to enjoy its works anytime and anywhere.

A new series of articles featuring the voices of gallerists. This column introduces the features of each gallery, how to meet artists, what to look for in their works, and trends in the art market.

The gallerists featured in this series are directors of galleries established in the past few years in Tokyo and belong to the Contemporary Art Dealers Association of Nippon (CADAN). The first is Tsuyoshi Ueda of TALION GALLERY. The word “talion” in the gallery’s name expresses Ueda’s desire to find a principle that will generate new connections among people, authorities, and languages consisting art scene. It is marked by its style of presenting exhibition concepts from a highly critical perspective and curating works of multiple artists.

What is the gallerists’ perspective on the forefront of Tokyo art scene? This series is also a must-read for aspiring gallerists.

Kadokawa Culture Museum, a multi-cultural complex featuring art, natural history and books, opened in Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture, in November 2020. It was built as a landmark of Tokorozawa Sakura Town, the base of the COOL JAPAN FOREST concept, a regional development project jointly promoted by Tokorozawa City and the KADOKAWA entertainment company, which set up a new office in the same area.

In a small corner of Shinjuku, Tokyo’s bustling office and entertainment district with the country’s largest train station, is Shinjuku Golden Gai, a neighborhood of restaurants and bars that has fostered a unique post-war culture. It was here that Naoki Ishikawa, about to graduate from university and searching for a way to present his photographs to the world, had a fateful encounter with photographer Daido Moriyama.

“Blinkin’ Beats – The World of Rhythms You Doodle with Sounds and Light” was a music workshop held on Sunday, September 5, 2021, at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. It was the first collaboration of “ratatap,” an installation work created by Junichi Kanebako, an artist who produces disability-friendly musical instruments that people with or without disabilities can play together, and the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Workshop Leaders (hereafter WSL). The participants enjoyed the “visible sounds” of cute characters called Otodama-kun, which appeared when they made sounds.