The legendary Tokiwaso apartment building was once home to illustrious manga artists the likes of Osamu Tezuka, Fujio A. Fujiko, and Fujio F. Fujiko. Demolished in 1982, the building embarked on a new start as the Toshima City Tokiwaso Manga Museum in July 2020. We visit the museum to experience the ingenious displays and learn how the building came to be recreated.

In our new series, Artist Workbook, we interview artists working in a diverse range of media. For our first installment, we speak with Dorita Takido, who blends technology and design to create communication experiences.

This is the third in 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. This installment features a visit to Koishikawa Korakuen, gardens belonging to members of the Mito Tokugawa family who were close to the Shogunate, located next to Tokyo Dome.

Together with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raffaello Sanzio, also known as Raphael, is one of the trio of great Renaissance masters. Known for his feminine and graceful style of painting, Raphael is also emblematic of the Renaissance, a period which saw the refinement and natural integration of the portrayal of the human body based on studies of perspective and anatomy by artists of previous periods. Marking 2020 as the 500th anniversary of Raphael’s death, we look back at his life and work.

This series of articles presents art museums around the world that offer free online access to public domain works (intellectual property not protected by copyright) in their collections. In this fourth installment, we feature the world’s largest project to digitize writings on biodiversity, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), a consortium of museums, libraries, and research institutions. Established in 2007, BHL currently provides online access to hundreds of thousands of books and over 58 million pages of documents. We spoke with Yukio Amano, sculptor of ghosts, ghouls and goblins, who explains the iconography of mythological creatures from around the world known since antiquity.

PLAY!, a complex cultural facility that uses art to let kids both play and learn, opened on the North Exit side of JR Tachikawa Station in June 2020. It offers many ways to spend time, with PLAY! MUSEUM, a “Pictures and Words” themed museum, on the 2nd floor, and PLAY! PARK, an indoor plaza, on the 3rd floor. The interior was designed by Tezuka Architects, which is known for designing the Fuji Kindergarten in Tachikawa, and art direction was carried out by Atsuki Kikuchi, who created the “VI” symbol for the Aomori Museum of Art.

In this series of articles, Edo-Tokyo Museum curator Miho Tanaka explores the appeal of traditional Japanese-style gardens in Tokyo. Her commentary is accompanied by images of the changing beauty of such gardens through the seasons captured by photographer Norihisa Kushibiki. The second installment of the series presents the Kyu-Shiba-rikyu Gardens, one of the oldest existing daimyo gardens, and attempts to unveil its most fascinating feature: the way in which the garden still preserves the ideas and spirit of its first owner, Okubo Tadatomo, embodied in various details scattered throughout the grounds.

Chocolate Cake Theater Group is a theater group that continues to present, to great domestic and international acclaim, profound and elaborate works inspired by actual events from the modern history. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chocolate Cake is garnering much attention for its new endeavors. President Yusuke Hisawa and actors Yuki Nishio and Atsushi Okamoto participated in an online discussion via Zoom on the history of the theater group and the future of theatre.

Iconic manga artist Machiko Hasegawa is best known as the creator of Sazae-san (“Sazae” literally means turbo cornutus), Ijiwaru basan (“Granny Mischief”), and other masterpieces beloved by generations of Japanese people. The Hasegawa Machiko Memorial Museum opened doors in July 2020, the centennial anniversary of the artist’s birth. The museum, which presents in great detail Machiko’s life and the fascinating world of her works, was built as an annex to the Hasegawa Machiko Art Museum.

This is a series of articles presenting art museums around the world that offer free online access to public domain works (intellectual property not protected by copyright) in their collections. The third installment of the series takes us again to the Rijksmuseum and puts the spotlight on the museum’s rich collection of 17th century still-life paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. In that period, the development of horticulture and the implementation of religious reforms inspired many artists to turn to flowers as a motif in their still-life paintings. This article presents three artists who created numerous floral still lifes. Junko Tanaka, a curator at the Makino Memorial Garden & Museum, explains the characteristics of their paintings.

In Tokyo, there are several traditional Japanese-style gardens that are designated as cultural heritage sites. Although geographically located in downtown Tokyo, these gardens are an oasis of calm amidst the urban hustle and bustle, and provide a refined space to savor Japanese culture. This series of articles presents their changing beauty through the seasons as captured by photographer Norihisa Kushibiki, and explores their historical background and main attractions through the commentary of Edo-Tokyo Museum curator Miho Tanaka.

As the Internet has become the primary modern-day source of information, there still exist numerous free handout periodicals that purposely use the medium of paper to disseminate information. This series of articles explores the multifaceted world of free newspapers, and, with “Change” as its theme, the first installment in the series introduces a complimentary periodical that stands up to the challenge of changing the image of the industry. This article puts the spotlight on Health Graphic Magazine, a free magazine that draws attention with its imaginative and playful cover artwork while being devoted to the highly-specialized themes of health and medical care. We spoke with its chief editor Isao Kadota of AISEI PHARMACY Co., Ltd., the company that publishes the magazine.

This is a series of articles presenting art museums around the world that offer free online access to public domain works (intellectual property not protected by copyright) in their collections. The second article explores the Rijksmuseum and its rich collection composed mainly of Dutch artworks, which spans the period from the Middle Ages through present day. Of special significance, even in such a diverse and expansive collection, are the works of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). In this article, art historian and long-time student of Vermeer’s art Yoriko Kobayashi explains several of his paintings of women depicted in domestic interiors.

There are art museums that offer open online access to works in their collections. In this article, we will present the public domain works of the Freer Gallery of Art, which is one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, a complex of numerous museums and educational and research centers. The Freer Gallery of Art is home to 7,500 works of art collected by industrialist Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919). Kit Brooks, a curator in charge of the Japanese Art Section at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, is our guide in this collection of masterpieces that have never left the gallery.

CADAN Yurakucho is a contemporary art gallery that opened doors in a corner of one of Japan’s most vibrant business districts in July 2020. It is unusual to see a contemporary art gallery open at such a prime location, only a minute walk from JR Yurakucho Station and three minutes on foot from Tokyo Metro Hibiya Station, but a deeper look into the background of the gallery reveals a vision of Yurakucho of the future and a prospect for the relationship between art and the city going forward.

We spoke with Tomio Koyama, Representative Director of the Contemporary Art Dealers Association Nippon (CADAN), Yoriyuki Arimitsu of Mitsubishi Estate Company, Limited, who provided the opportunity for the creation of CADAN Yurakucho, and Atsushi Fukai of Culture Vision Japan.

The Koganecho Bazaar 2020, an event which celebrates its 13th anniversary this year, was held on September 11 in the district of Koganecho, Yokohama. It was organized by NPO Koganecho Area Management Center. In addition to planning and running the event, the NPO is also in charge of managing one of Japan’s largest artist-in-residence programs, which attracts approximately 50 groups of artists. For this article, we interviewed Director Shingo Yamano and the NPO’s spokesperson Miki Kanda.

On January 18, 2020, a new art hub called Artizon Museum opened doors in Kyobashi, an area bustling with office worker. It inherits the Ishibashi Foundation collection owned by its predecessor, the Bridgestone Museum of Art, which for more than 65 years welcomed visitors at the same location, as well as its activities, and at the same time raises intriguing possibilities for new museum modalities and innovative ways to showcase art under the concept “Experiencing Creativity.” The present article outlines these initiatives and reports on the contemporary art events and collection exhibitions held at the museum from June 23 (Tuesday) through October 25 (Sunday).