Sébastien Raineri

The start of the year is always a time of intense anticipation for art fans in Tokyo, with the city’s numerous superb museums revealing their exhibition schedules for the coming 12 months. And with the full 2026 slate now out, we’re confident calling this year’s crop of shows one of the most plentiful in recent memory. First, you have your big international touring shows featuring artistic superstars from Picasso to Ron Mueck and the Young British Artists of the ’90s – an eclectic line-up spread out from February all the way to September. Then there’s a treasure trove of solo exhibitions highlighting domestic heavy hitters including Hajime Sorayama, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Minami Tada – the latter the focus of a long-awaited mega-retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in autumn. All that and so much more – these are the very best shows to see in Tokyo this year. RECOMMENDED: The 13 best free museums in Tokyo – from art and history to taxidermy parasites

At 23 years young, Art Osaka is going stronger than ever. That’s our main takeaway after the 2025 edition of the longest-running contemporary art fair in Japan ended its five-day programme across two complementary venues: the Osaka City Central Public Hall in Nakanoshima and Creative Center Osaka in Kitakagaya. From June 5 to 9, Osaka once again shone as a vital axis of the country’s contemporary art scene, as it hosted a celebration of cutting-edge work; one that continues to distinguish itself through a dual commitment to curatorial ambition and grassroots creativity. Here are some of the things that caught our eye at Art Osaka 2025. RECOMMENDED: How to see the highlights of Osaka’s arts and culture scene in one day

タイムアウト東京 > アート&カルチャー > 「KYOTOGRAPHIE 2025」に行くべき6のこと 春が広がる京都。写真という芸術メディアを通じた、文化交流のための国内随一の国際的なプラットフォーム「KYOTOGRAPHIE」が開催される時期だ。京都の伝統とイノベーションが融合したこの国際写真祭は、京都1000年の遺産と国際的な文化発信地としての役割が合わさっている。 KYOTOGRAPHIEは単なる国際写真祭ではない。京都への入り口である。京都の寺院、伝統的な町家、近代的なランドマークなど、詩的な背景の中、毎年恒例の本写真祭は、京都という文化都市をオープンエアのギャラリーへと変えていく。 明治時代の酒蔵から京都駅の洗練された鉄骨まで、京都の最も象徴的であり、かつ思いがけない場所に、考え抜かれ、埋め込まれた力強いビジュアルが期待できるのだ。2025年4月12日〜5月11日（日）の会期で開催される今年のテーマは「HUMANITY」。ここでは英語版編集部によるKYOTOGRAPHIEが、毎春アートファンにとって行くべきディスティネーションとなる理由を6つ紹介したい。

The Setouchi Triennale is one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary art festivals. Since its inception in 2010, the showcase has brought world-class art to the islands of the Seto Inland Sea in the form of site-specific installations, interactive projects, and performances that integrate seamlessly with the natural and cultural environment. Visitors can explore artworks scattered across Naoshima, Teshima, Shodoshima, and around 10 other islands, encountering everything from avant-garde sculptures to traditional crafts reinterpreted in contemporary forms. Returning in 2025 to once again transform the Inland Sea area into a massive open-air museum, the Triennale is held across three seasons: Spring (April 18 to May 25), Summer (August 1 to August 31) and Autumn (October 3 to November 9). The festival always brings together artists from around the world to engage with the region’s rich history, breathtaking landscapes and vibrant local communities, and the 2025 edition will continue this legacy with new commissions that reflect themes of ecology, sustainability and coexistence – urgent topics in an era of climate change and depopulation. Read on for our picks of things not to miss at the 2025 Setouchi Triennale. RECOMMENDED: Check out our ultimate guide to the Setouchi area

As spring unfolds in the ancient city of Kyoto, the spotlight once again turns to Kyotographie – Japan’s premier international platform for the exchange of culture through the artistic medium of photography. Celebrating its home city’s unique blend of tradition and innovation, this festival intertwines Kyoto’s thousand-year legacy with its role as a beacon of international culture. But Kyotographie isn’t just a photo festival: it’s a portal. Set against the poetic backdrop of Kyoto’s temples, teahouses, traditional machiya dwellings and modern landmarks, the annual springtime celebration transforms Japan’s cultural capital into an open-air gallery. Expect powerful visuals thoughtfully embedded in some of the city’s most iconic – and unexpected – venues, from a Meiji-era (1868–1912) sake brewery to the sleek steel face of Kyoto Station. Running from April 12 to May 11, this year’s edition of the festival highlights the unifying theme of ‘Humanity’. Here’s why Kyotographie makes for an essential addition to any art fan’s spring itinerary.

Their time in the subcultural shadows long gone, manga and anime are now common sights at prestigious art museums around the world, with large-scale exhibitions showcasing otaku culture and popular titles popping up from New York and London to Singapore in recent years. But Tokyo is still the world capital of anime and manga shows, and this year brings another packed slate of highlights to exhibition venues around the city. These are our picks of the best displays coming up in 2025 – from cyberpunk dreams and epic sagas to art inspired by the world’s most famous monster. RECOMMENDED: The best art exhibitions to see in Tokyo this year

The art year 2025 in Tokyo is looking packed, with a hefty slate of exhibitions and events highlighting everything from cutting-edge contemporary art to thousand-year old treasures. The visionary sound installations of Ryuichi Sakamoto can be appreciated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo through the end of March, while spring sees the Mori Museum highlight the intersection of art and digital technology and the Azabudai Hills Gallery showcase the eclectic work of Tomokazu Matsuyama. Big draws in the latter half of the year include an in-depth look at the career of Expo 2025 site designer Sou Fujimoto and the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum’s celebration of 1920s fashion. Mark your calendars… RECOMMENDED: The best new attractions and facilities opening in Tokyo in 2025

Gallery Koyanagi in Ginza presents a new series of collages by Christian Marclay, a pioneering figure in experimental music. Having started out using turntables and vinyl records as instruments before extending his practice into video, collage and installation, the California-born artist’s work interrogates how we perceive, construct and remember sound. Placing auditory experience at the centre of visual form, the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery comes on the 40th anniversary of his first visit to Japan and continues Marclay’s long-standing engagement with sampling and recomposition. The exhibited works draw on fragments of popular culture – magazines, record sleeves, film imagery – reassembled through processes of cutting, layering and omission. In the Concentric Listening series, faces are reduced to hollow outlines, their ears preserved as points of entry into an otherwise absent interior. These nested forms ripple outward, suggesting listening as a cumulative, resonant act. Elsewhere, Oculi (Listening Trio) transforms record sleeves into apertures through which partial images emerge. In Marclay’s hands, collage becomes more than a technique: it operates as a metaphor for perception itself, where meaning arises through fragments, overlaps and echoes.

Often celebrated as a pivotal bridge between Realism and Impressionism, Eugène Boudin remains one of the most quietly influential figures in nineteenth-century French art. Born in 1824, Boudin was among the first artists to embrace en plein air painting, capturing fleeting effects of light and atmosphere with remarkable immediacy. His luminous depictions of skies, coastlines and rural life, particularly in his native Normandy, would profoundly shape the vision of younger painters including Claude Monet. Marking the 50th anniversary of the Sompo Museum of Art, ‘Eugène Boudin’ brings together approximately 100 works, offering the first major retrospective of the artist in Japan in nearly three decades. While Boudin is best known for his marine scenes, the exhibition broadens this perspective, highlighting his depictions of figures, architecture and pastoral life. Through oil paintings, drawings, pastels and prints, the exhibition traces Boudin’s sustained engagement with the changing conditions of nature. His ability to render transient moments emerges as central to his practice. By revisiting Boudin beyond the familiar framework of Impressionist precursor, the exhibition offers a nuanced reassessment of his role in the development of modern landscape painting.

Swiss-born Urs Fischer has built an international reputation through a practice that destabilises conventional distinctions between permanence and decay, authenticity and illusion, and high art and popular culture, often through works that are at once playful and disquieting. At Fergus McCaffrey Tokyo, ‘Machigai Sagashi – Spot the Difference’ unfolds as a spatial and psychological investigation structured across two contrasting levels of the gallery. On the upper floor, a pair of monumental self-portrait sculptures, part of Fischer’s ‘Candle’ series, stand in mirrored rooms, slowly melting over the course of the exhibition. Their gradual deformation, culminating in eventual recasting, stages a cycle of dissolution and renewal that resists fixed identity. Below, the sub-basement transforms into an immersive environment of visual disorientation. Walls, floors and ceilings are enveloped in a Rorschach-like pattern of holes and repairs, while bronze sculptures and drawings invite viewers to decipher subtle variations, echoing the titular game. Blending conceptual rigor with absurdity, the exhibition probes the instability of perception and the fragmented nature of the self, inviting viewers into a shifting field where meaning is constantly in flux.

Beneath the fantastical surfaces of Studio Ghibli’s beloved anime films one finds emotional nuance, moral ambiguity and contemplative pacing – features that resonate strikingly with the philosophical principles of Zen. In autumn 2026, the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art hosts ‘Zen and Studio Ghibli’, an immersive show that explores this unexpected yet deeply rooted connection. Drawing inspiration from a dialogue between producer Toshio Suzuki and a Zen monk, the exhibition invites visitors to experience Ghibli’s universe through a ‘Zen gaze’. Centred on Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent film, The Boy and the Heron, the exhibition unfolds through carefully constructed spaces featuring iconic scenes, memorable lines and Suzuki’s calligraphic works. Rather than offering definitive readings, it encourages visitors to dwell in uncertainty, reflecting Zen’s emphasis on presence and perception. Set in Kyoto, where Zen culture remains woven into daily life, the exhibition is set to offer a contemplative encounter that bridges pop culture and philosophy.

Born in Paris in 1871 and trained under Symbolist master Gustave Moreau, the painter Georges Rouault developed a singular style marked by bold contours, stained-glass luminosity and a profound engagement with themes of faith, suffering and human dignity. ‘Memories of the Artist’s Studio’ at the Panasonic Shiodome Museum offers a rare opportunity to explore Rouault’s creative world through the lens of his working environment. Drawing on the museum’s extensive collection – now numbering around 270 works – the exhibition places particular emphasis on recent acquisitions, including key pieces from Rouault’s Fauvist period. Structured chronologically, the show traces the evolution of Rouault’s practice across four major phases, highlighting how his approach to form, colour and subject matter continually shifted over time. A standout feature is a partial reconstruction of his final Paris studio, recreated with original tools and materials rarely exhibited outside France. By foregrounding the studio as both physical space and site of memory, the exhibition offers an intimate perspective on Rouault’s artistic process, revealing how his deeply personal vision was shaped by the environments in which he worked.

Roppongi Art Night returns in full force from October 31 to November 1 2026, again transforming one of Tokyo’s most vibrant districts into an all-night celebration of contemporary creativity. Launched in 2009, the festival has become a cornerstone of the city’s cultural calendar, inviting visitors to explore art installations, performances and multimedia projects from dusk until dawn. Spanning key venues including Roppongi Hills, the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo Midtown and the National Art Center, Tokyo, the event extends into public spaces and streets, creating a dynamic urban circuit where art and city life intersect. This year marks the festival’s 15th edition and a return to its original all-night format, restoring the immersive, nocturnal atmosphere that defines its appeal. The 2026 edition places a special focus on France, drawing inspiration from Nuit Blanche, the Parisian event that originally inspired Roppongi Art Night. Curated by José-Manuel Gonçalvès, the programme highlights a diverse selection of French artists through installations, video works and performances. Alongside this international spotlight, the Open Call Project once again invites public participation, reinforcing the festival’s commitment to accessibility and experimentation. For one night only, Roppongi becomes a sleepless stage where Tokyo’s urban landscape is reimagined through art.

The first display of its kind in Japan to comprehensively explore the history and cultural significance of sign design, ‘Grand Sign Exhibition’ at the Tokyo Midtown Design Hub turns the spotlight on a discipline fundamentally embedded in daily life. Organised by the Japan Sign Design Association, the exhibition traces the evolution of signs from postwar Japan to the present day, highlighting their expanding role as complex agents of social connection. At its core is a large-scale presentation structured around eleven thematic contexts, through which 77 landmark projects are examined using photographs, videos, models and mock-ups. Complementing this historical overview, the ‘Material-tone’ section offers a more experimental perspective, showcasing how ten companies reinterpret a single arrow motif through diverse materials and technologies. Meanwhile, a special display dedicated to the late graphic designer Takenobu Igarashi features iconic signage created for Parco, including a neon installation. Bridging design, technology and urban experience, the exhibition reveals how signage shapes the way we perceive and inhabit contemporary space.

The Tokyo Station Gallery presents the first major exhibition in Japan to feature the works of Swiss artist Karl Walser (1877–1943), who built a multifaceted career that spanned painting, illustration, book design and stage production. Bringing together approximately 150 pieces, many shown for the first time, the retrospective is especially notable for its focus on the time Walser spent in Japan. Closely associated with the Modernist Berlin Secession movement, Walser’s art blends the somber tonalities of fin-de-siècle aesthetics with refined, luminous colour, producing images marked by an enduring sense of mystery. Long overshadowed by his younger brother, the writer Robert Walser, his oeuvre is now receiving renewed scholarly and public attention. The exhibition traces Walser’s evolution from his early Symbolist-inflected paintings and Jugendstil-inspired drawings to his prolific output as an illustrator and designer for major literary figures. But its most compelling part highlights the artist’s 1908 journey to Japan, undertaken during a period of personal crisis. Travelling through Tokyo, Kyoto and Miyazu, Walser produced a remarkable body of watercolours and sketches depicting festivals, landscapes and everyday scenes. Rarely exhibited, these works stand out for their vivid chromatic sensitivity and documentary value. Further sections explore his collaborations in theatre and mural painting, revealing an artist whose practice consistently bridged visual art, literature an

A mercurial figure in Japan’s 19th-century art world, Kawanabe Kyosai remains celebrated for his virtuosic draftsmanship, biting humour and irreverent imagination. Trained first under the ukiyo-e master Utagawa Kuniyoshi before entering the Kano school, whose members served as official artists to the Tokugawa shogunate, Kyosai lived through the political and cultural upheaval of the Meiji Restoration while developing a singular style that bridged tradition and experimentation. His works, ranging from religious imagery to playful caricatures and lively depictions of animals and yokai, capture a society in transition, often with satirical flair. The Suntory Museum of Art’s ‘Kyosai’s World: The Israel Goldman Collection’ offers an excellent opportunity to encounter this restless creativity through approximately 110 works drawn from a collection widely regarded as the world’s richest and most comprehensive assemblage of Kyosai’s works. Paintings and prints alike, from meticulously finished compositions to impromptu sekiga drawings produced in performative settings, reveal both his technical mastery and his delight in subverting convention. The exhibition highlights Kyosai’s wide thematic range while situating his work within the dramatic cultural shifts of 19th-century Japan, as Western influence began to reshape visual culture. Particularly striking are his humorous and often subversive responses to ‘modernity’, in which anthropomorphic figures and playful distortions mask sharp

Brace yourselves – things are about to get intensely kawaii. From April 9 to June 21, the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Roppongi hosts the final and most expansive edition of a pink-hued exhibition that has toured Japan since 2021. Marking more than 60 years since the founding of cute character empire Sanrio, the show returns to Tokyo in an enriched version that looks back not only at the company’s history, but also at the birth and global rise of kawaii as a cultural language. Before Hello Kitty’s debut in 1974 (!), Sanrio was already exploring new forms of visual softness, warmth and emotional connection. The exhibition traces this formative period, revealing how kawaii emerged as a distinct value through early designs, products and ideas. Subsequent sections delve into the creation of the company’s multifarious characters, the enduring appeal of Kitty-chan and Sanrio’s unique philosophy of growing characters together with their fans. Central to this story is Ichigo Shinbun, the fan mag that fostered a participatory culture long before the age of social media. The exhibition culminates in a spectacular gathering of characters: over 200 appear on display, the largest number in Sanrio exhibition history, alongside a vast array of nostalgic merchandise. More than a celebration of cuteness, ‘The Beginning of Kawaii’ offers a thoughtful portrait of how Sanrio shaped, and continues to shape, a global cultural phenomenon. When at the exhibition, be sure to also check out the collab

Held at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, this ambitious exhibition reconsiders surrealism as a far-reaching cultural force that has reshaped both art and everyday life. Defined by André Breton in 1924 as a practice grounded in the ‘omnipotence of dreams’ and the pursuit of a ‘superior reality’, surrealism drew deeply on Freudian psychoanalysis to unlock the subconscious. While its dreamlike imagery and unsettling juxtapositions are widely recognised in painting and photography, the exhibition reveals how surrealist thinking extended far beyond the gallery, infiltrating advertising, fashion and interior design. Organised into six thematic sections, the show traces the movement’s expansion across media, examining how techniques such as automatism, collage and dépaysement (‘disorientation’) transformed both visual culture and lived environments. Masterpieces by leading figures of the genre, including Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Man Ray and Giorgio de Chirico, are shown alongside rare objects, posters, photographs and design works. Highlights include Magritte’s ‘The Museum of the King’, Elsa Schiaparelli’s iconic fashion designs, and striking examples of surrealist advertising and interiors. Drawing on major collections throughout Japan, the exhibition offers a timely reappraisal of surrealism’s enduring power to unsettle reality – and reimagine it.

From April 7 to July 26, the National Film Archive of Japan explores the creative intersection between cinema and graphic design with ‘The Art of Film Posters in Japan: Revisited’. While film posters in Japan were traditionally produced anonymously under the control of studios and distributors, many stand out today as striking works of graphic art in their own right. Revisiting a landmark exhibition first held in 2012, the show incorporates newly acquired works and brings together more than 90 posters produced mainly between the 1960s and the 1980s, a period of profound innovation in Japanese visual culture. The exhibition traces the evolution of the medium across four thematic sections. Early post-war posters, often painted in a dramatic illustrative style, reveal how artists sought to capture the emotional essence of films. By the 1960s, a new generation of designers, including Kiyoshi Awazu, Tadanori Yokoo and Makoto Wada, began to challenge conventional promotional aesthetics with bold experimentation. A decisive turning point came with the emergence of the Art Theatre Guild in the 1960s, which encouraged collaborations between filmmakers and avant-garde designers. Through these vivid and sometimes surprising images, the exhibition reveals another face of Japanese cinema – one that flourished beyond the screen, transforming the humble ad poster into an expressive and enduring art form.

「六本木ヒルズ」森タワーの52階にある「東京シティビュー」は、この1年ほど、松本零士や手塚治虫、『エヴァンゲリオン』といった作品を取り上げ、野心的な漫画・アニメ展の発信地としてじわじわと存在感を高めてきた。2026年の春、地上250メートルに位置する展望台が次に掲げるのは、覆面作家・魚豊による哲学的な作品『チ。 ―地球の運動について―』（以下、『チ。』）である。 『チ。』は2020年から2022年にかけて連載された漫画で、舞台は15世紀のヨーロッパ。当時、天動説は絶対的な教義として支配的であった。その常識に疑問を投げかけ、地動説という異端の思想を追い求めた人々の姿が描かれている。知への強い信念ゆえに、彼らは迫害や死の危険と向き合うことになる。 『チ。』は批評家から高く評価され、2022年には手塚治虫文化賞の最高賞である「マンガ大賞」を受賞。24歳という史上最年少の受賞を、魚豊は果たした。さらにマッドハウス制作によるアニメ版が、2024年10月から2025年3月にかけて放送された。 そして今回、『チ。』の世界が東京シティビューという場で新たに立ち上がる。来場者は東京都心を見下ろしながら、その先に広がる宇宙へと想像力を広げていく。 上空からの眺め――そして広大な宇宙へ 同展は、じっくりと展示に向き合うことが求められる。展望台という空間そのものを知的探究の場へと変えているのだ。『チ。』の物語と、東京シティビューの開放的な眺望、そして夜景の光が重なり合うことで、中世の天文学者と現代の観客とのあいだに通底する視点が浮かび上がる。 Photo: Sébastien Raineri 展示は緻密に構成されており、天文学、宇宙の構造、知の継承といったテーマが全体に織り込まれている。来場者は印象的なシーンやせりふの断片に導かれながら、初期天文学に宿る知的な熱量に触れ、「自分たちは何者なのか」という「存在」を揺るがすような緊張感を呼び起こされる。 都市の光とはるかな星々 Photo: Sébastien Raineri 同展の大きな見どころの一つが、虚構と現実を重ね合わせた視覚的な演出。大規模なインスタレーションでは、「東京タワー」を含む都市のスカイラインと、夜空を見上げる登場人物たちの姿が重ね合わされる。その表現は映画のようでありながら、同時に静かな思索を促し、中世と現代の時間の隔たりをあいまいにする。 Photo: Sébastien Raineri 来場者が作品世界に入り込めるインタラクティブな写真も展示。モノクロの線描で構成された空間は漫画のコマの美学をそのまま立ち上げたようなもので、観客は物語の内部へと足を踏み入れるようだ。こうした演出は、「知覚とは構築され、媒介され、変化しうるものである」という同展の核心的なテーマを強く印象づける。 Starry Sky Theatre. Photo courtesy of Ohira Tech Ltd. これらの展示にさらに奥行きを与えるのが、「星空シアター」だ。プラネタリウムクリエーターの大平貴之率いるチームとの協働によって開発された。最先端の「MEGASTAR」システムにより、数百万の星々をスクリーンに360度映し出し、観客は中世の天文学者が思い描いた空から、科学的に描き出された広大な宇宙へといざなわれる。 この演出自体は漫画を直接再現したものではないが、『チ。』の物語を宇宙論的発見の歴史という、より大きな文脈の中に位置づける役割を果たしているといえるだろう。 知と信念のはざまで 本展は、単なる視覚的

Having highlighted the likes of Leiji Matsumoto, Osamu Tezuka and the Evangelion universe over the last year alone, Tokyo City View has quietly transformed into one of the city’s premier venues for ambitious manga and anime exhibitions. This spring, the observation deck 250 metres above Roppongi continues its hot streak with a showcase featuring mononymous creator Uoto’s philosophical masterpiece Orb: On the Movements of the Earth. Serialised between 2020 and 2022, the manga unfolds in 15th-century Europe, where the geocentric worldview reigns as absolute doctrine. Against this orthodoxy, a constellation of individuals driven by an uncompromising devotion to knowledge risk persecution and death to pursue the heretical idea of heliocentrism. Orb was a hit especially among critics, earning the prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2022 and inspiring a subsequent anime adaptation produced by Madhouse that was broadcast between October 2024 and March 2025. Now the work’s universe finds an unexpected yet compelling extension at Tokyo City View, with an immersive exhibition that invites visitors to reconsider both the city below and the cosmos beyond. A view from above – and into the vastness of space Come ready to concentrate, as the exhibition transforms the observation deck into a site of intellectual inquiry. By aligning the narrative of Orb with the vertiginous openness of Tokyo City View and the luminous nightscape of the city below, the show suggests a continuity betwee

Spring has certainly sprung in Tokyo, with daytime temperatures in the 20s and the cherry blossoms already fluttering to the ground in many parts of the city. Another sure sign of the season is the unveiling of new exhibitions at museums and galleries across the capital, and with this year’s slate of spring shows looking loaded, we’ve put together a list of the 10 most noteworthy displays to check out in April and May. Whether you’re into traditional Japanese art, high-tech sculpture, multidisciplinary installations or meditations on the meaning of cuteness, there’s sure to be something to pique your interest at Tokyo’s museums this spring. Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849): ‘Clear Day with a Southern Breeze (‘Blue Fuji’)’, from the series ‘Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji’, ca. 1830–1833. Color woodblock. Iuchi Collection, on deposit at The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. ‘Hokusai: “Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji” from the Iuchi Collection’The National Museum of Western Art, until June 14 Katsushika Hokusai is all the rage in Tokyo. Last year saw several acclaimed exhibitions dive into the ukiyo-e master’s ginormous oeuvre, and the Edo native’s iconic art has also been the subject of some pretty remarkable reinterpretations lately. Next up in highlighting the printmaking genius is the National Museum of Western Art, whose exhibition marks the first public unveiling of a remarkable group of works placed on deposit at the museum in 2024. The exhibition showcases all 46 prints

What constitutes good art, and which artworks deserve mainstream recognition? Over the past 50 years, few institutions in Japan have been more influential in answering those questions than NHK Sunday Museum (Nichiyo Bijutsukan). Since its debut in 1976, the weekly TV programme has occupied a singular place in the country’s cultural landscape, airing more than 2,500 episodes featuring artists, writers and thinkers reflecting on works that shaped their sensibilities. As such, the show has introduced a broad audience to countless masterpieces while cultivating a shared language through which anyone can discuss and reinterpret art. This half-century legacy of curating art for the general public is turned into a spatial experience at the University Art Museum’s ‘NHK Sunday Museum 50th Anniversary Exhibition’. On show at the Ueno museum until June 21, the exhibition brings together more than 120 works highlighted throughout the programme’s history. Paintings, sculptures, craft objects and archival footage converge into a popular history of art and evolving sensibilities in a rapidly transforming society. Words that endure, images that speak Auguste Rodin, ‘The Thinker’, 1880. Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. Photo: Sébastien Raineri The exhibition unfolds across five thematic chapters, with the opening section foregrounding one of Sunday Museum’s defining features: its dialogue between artworks and the individuals who interpret them. Early broadcasts invited prominent cultural

Few artists can lay claim to an aesthetic as singular as Hajime Sorayama’s. The veteran illustrator and designer’s concoction of sensuous forms and gleaming metallic surfaces is immediately recognisable, whether in Sony’s original Aibo robot-dog, on the covers of Aerosmith albums or in the fashion collections of Thierry Mugler. Through ventures like these and, above all, his signature Sexy Robot (1983–) series, the Ehime native has left a lasting imprint on science fiction, design and pop culture. That still-evolving legacy can now be explored in stimulating detail at Creative Museum Tokyo, where an exhibition titled ‘Sorayama: Light, Reflection, Transparency –Tokyo–’ is on show until May 31. The most extensive Sorayama retrospective to date, the display is the Japan version of an exhibition first presented in Shanghai and traces nearly half a century of its protagonist’s artistic exploration through paintings, sculptures, design drawings and immersive installations. From robot dogs to rock ‘n’ roll Photo: Sébastien Raineri ‘Light, Reflection, Transparency’ begins by probing the origins of Sorayama’s imagery. Among the highlight exhibits is the first robot painting he produced in 1978 for a whisky advertisement, marking the birth of the aesthetic that would later define his career. From this starting point, visitors encounter an expanding universe of robotic figures: humanoids, animals, dinosaurs, and fantastical creatures that suggest a speculative future in which biologic

Thanks to the world-famous work of artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige, ukiyo-e woodblock prints are typically considered an art form distinctive to the Edo period (1603–1868) – the age of shoguns and samurai, the quintessential ‘old Japan’. But ukiyo-e did not end with the fall of warrior rule. Instead, the medium evolved in fascinating directions between the late 19th and early 20th century, when Japanese printmakers produced a remarkable oeuvre of works greatly influenced by their country’s sudden turn towards modernity. Some of the greatest masterpieces of this period can be viewed now at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Marunouchi, where an exhibition titled ‘From Kiyochika to Hasui: Ukiyo-e and Shin-Hanga Woodblock Prints from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art’ is showing until May 24. Built around some 130 prints, most of them borrowed from the renowned Robert O Muller Collection at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC, the display explores a pivotal moment in Japanese visual culture: the twilight of ukiyo-e and its reinvention as shin-hanga. At its heart lies a tale of transformation; a story of how traditional woodblock printing adapted to photography, modernisation and global exchange at a dramatic juncture in Japanese history. Kiyochika Kobayashi and the light of a vanishing Edo Photo: Sébastien Raineri The exhibition opens with the work of Kiyochika Kobayashi (1847–1915), who is often called ‘the last ukiyo-e artist’. A samurai who

In a near future where the boundary between human and machine has become blurred beyond recognition, Major Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg operative, leads an elite public security unit tasked with combating cybercrime and terrorism in the fictional Kansai metropolis of New Port City. That, in a nutshell, is the premise of Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, a franchise that since 1989 has gone from an obscure manga serialised in Young Magazine Pirate Edition to a global cultural reference point influencing cinema, contemporary art and digital culture as a whole. Revered for its dense visual detail, speculative technological realism and philosophical depth, Shirow’s creation hit the big time by way of multiple animated adaptations – from Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 original to Innocence and later series such as Stand Alone Complex – that would redefine the aesthetics and intellectual ambitions of anime worldwide. The entire anime history of one of Japan’s most influential sci-fi franchises can now be explored at Tokyo Node. Until April 5 2026, the Toranomon Hills venue hosts ‘Ghost in the Shell: The Exhibition’, the first major showcase to offer a comprehensive review of Ghost in the Shell as a cultural phenomenon. Reframing the question of humanity Conceived as a cross-sectional exploration, the exhibition brings together manga, animation, installation art, architecture and cutting-edge technology to reexamine a question that has defined Ghost in the Shell for more than three decades: w

Just across the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge from Kobe, Awaji Island is a place that invites you to slow down. The largest island in the Seto Inland Sea, it’s home to some 130,000 people, but offers a striking change of pace from the bustle on the mainland. I came to Awaji curious to learn about a long-running and celebrated project to enliven the charming island. Since 2008, the staffing company Pasona Group has been reshaping Awaji by drawing on local resources and the beauty of the natural environment. The revitalisation project has enabled the island to build on its latent strengths and shape them into places that reward the curious traveller. The results of this undertaking become clear once you’re on the ground, enjoying vegetables pulled from nearby fields, admiring a gorgeous sunset over the Inland Sea – or, on a less tranquil note, coming face to face with the King of the Monsters himself. From forest paths to pop-cultural realms   Photo: Pasona Group. Godzilla: TM & © TOHO CO., LTD.Ziplining into Godzilla’s maw at Nijigen no Mori   On Awaji, play becomes part of the landscape. The island’s offbeat properties are on full display at Nijigen no Mori, an immense open-air amusement park where narrative settles into nature. It was here that I found myself facing a colossal Godzilla, frozen mid-destruction, its scale both absurd and exhilarating. Visitors are drafted into a fictional intervention force, propelled through the monster’s gaping jaws or alongside its massive silhoue

『ストリートファイター』『バイオハザード』『ロックマン』『モンスターハンター』――世界のゲームカルチャーへの影響力という点で、カプコンに並び称されるスタジオはそう多くない。 1983年に大阪で創業したカプコンは、この40年以上にわたり、次々と時代を象徴するフランチャイズを生み出してきた。その作品群は、家庭用ゲーム機やパソコンの枠を超え、映画やファッション、さらにはポップカルチャーの言語表現にまで影響を及ぼしている。 最先端の技術、引き込まれるストーリーテリング、そして記憶に残る世界観とキャラクターデザインを一貫して融合させてきたカプコン。その創造のDNAをひもとく「大カプコン展」が、2026年2月22日（日）まで「CREATIVE MUSEUM TOKYO」で開催中だ。ビデオゲームに少しでも関心のある人なら、ぜひ足を運びたい。 © CAPCOM 革新と想像力の軌跡 本展はすでに大阪、名古屋、鳥取で大きな反響を呼び、東京開催後は新潟へ巡回予定。カプコンの歩みをたどると同時に、表現としてのビデオゲームの歴史にも光を当てる。ノスタルジックな回顧展でありながら、ゲーム文化の未来を見据えた祝祭でもあり、長年のファンから初めて触れる来場者まで、幅広い層に響く構成だ。 「世界を魅了するゲームクリエイション」をサブタイトルに掲げる本展。想像力の力やゲームテクノロジーの進化、そしてピクセル時代のヒーローから最先端のビジュアルストーリーテリングに至るまで、カプコン作品が持つ普遍的な魅力を没入型展示で体感できる。 ROUND 1：歴史、キャラクター、象徴的アート 「カプコン ゲームクロニクル」のセクションでは、リュウ、春麗、レオン・S・ケネディらお馴染みのキャラクターが新規アニメーションで登場する「キャラクターパレード」の映像からスタート。鮮烈な演出が、五感で体験する展示の幕開けを告げる。 Characters on Parade © CAPCOM 「ヒストリー」は、同社の成長とゲーム業界の進化を重ね合わせて紹介。初期ハードウエアやゲームカートリッジ、コンセプトスケッチなどを通して、地方スタジオから世界的クリエーティブ集団へと発展した軌跡をたどる。 Posters & key art © CAPCOM さらに、貴重なデザインシートや設定資料、制作メモにより、キャラクター誕生の裏側にも迫っていく。有名キャラクターの初期のビジュアル案が並び、その背後にある緻密な考え方を知ることができる。また、オリジナルのメインアートやポスターは、それぞれの時代の空気感や精神を鮮やかに映し出す。 ROUND 2：テクノロジーとアイディアの融合 「テクノロジーとアイデアの進化」では、限られた技術環境の中でいかに創意工夫がなされてきたかを紹介。また「ドット絵時代の創意工夫」では、1980年代の技術的制約を示すとともに、『ロックマン』など初期ゲームで発揮された驚くべき工夫と創意を体感できる。 来場者がタブレットを使って、アイコニックなドット絵を描く体験ができる「カプコンピクセルラボ」も登場。絵心がなくても短いミニゲーム形式で楽しめる仕組みで、これは初期ゲーム開発の手軽さと創造的チャレンジに対する遊び心あるオマージュでもある。 Capcom Pixel Art Lab © CAPCOM このほか、来場者の表情をリアルタイムでキャラクターに反映する「フェイシャルトラッキングミラー」や、野菜を折る音など意外な素材から効果音を生み出すサウンド制作展示「カプコン流 効果音メイキング」など、

Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Mega Man, Monster Hunter and more – when impact on global gaming culture is used as the yardstick, few studios bear mentioning in the same breath as Capcom. Founded in Osaka in 1983, the company has birthed one seminal franchise after the other over the past four decades. Its titles have extended their reach far beyond TV and computer screens, influencing film, fashion, and even the vocabulary of popular culture. Throughout its history, Capcom has demonstrated remarkable consistency in its ability to combine cutting-edge technology, captivating storytelling, and unforgettable worlds and character design. Showcasing all these aspects – and so much more – the ‘Capcom Creation’ exhibition, on at Creative Museum Tokyo until February 22 2026, explores the studio’s creative DNA through a display that makes essential viewing for anyone with even a passing interesting in video games. © CAPCOM A legacy of innovation and imagination Having already drawn huge crowds in Osaka, Nagoya and Tottori, and slated to continue on to Niigata following its Tokyo run, the exhibition traces the legacy of Capcom as well as the broader history of video games as an expressive art form. It’s both a nostalgic retrospective and a forward-looking celebration of gaming culture, designed to resonate with lifelong fans and curious newcomers alike. Subtitled ‘Moving Hearts Across the Globe’, the immersive exhibition is a tribute to the power of imagination, the evolution of gam

Set against the vibrant, dangerous backdrop of 1980s Shinjuku, Tsukasa Hojo’s manga City Hunter defined urban cool for an entire generation of readers. Seamlessly blending hard-boiled action, comedy and emotional depth, the series ran from 1985 to 1991, driven by the chaotic but intimate bond between ‘sweeper’ Ryo Saeba and his partner Kaori Makimura. City Hunter elevated Tsukasa Hojo as one of Japan’s most influential and stylistically distinctive manga artists. Now, 40 years after its serialisation, the franchise boasts more than 50 million copies in circulation, countless adaptations, and a legacy that continues to define the genre. Celebrating that four-decade history, the Ueno Royal Museum presents ‘Forever, City Hunter’ – the largest exhibition ever devoted to the franchise. Running from November 22 to December 28, the display is both a commemoration and a homecoming, an opportunity for long-time admirers and new fans alike to rediscover the pulse-pounding pace and iconic characters that made City Hunter a cultural milestone. A monumental showcase of original art Photo: Sébastien Raineri At the heart of the exhibition are more than 400 original drawings – the most extensive display of Hojo’s hand-drawn work ever assembled. These reveal the precision and expressive power of his linework: the sharp contrasts of night-time shootouts, the swirling motion of chases across neon-lit Tokyo, and the subtle softness in Kaori’s expressions as her relationship with Ryo evolves. S

Casual and die-hard Eva fans alike: set course for Tokyo City View now. The lofty exhibition space on the 52nd floor of Roppongi Hills Mori Tower is currently showing ‘All of Evangelion’, the most extensive showcase ever devoted to the franchise. Marking three decades since Neon Genesis Evangelion first appeared on television in 1995, the exhibition invites visitors to explore the evolution of one of the most influential works in contemporary Japanese animation through the production materials, design documents and visual experiments that shaped its striking world. Here’s what to expect at the show, which is set to run until January 12 2026. Entering the world of Evangelion Photo: Sébastien Raineri | © khara/Project Eva © khara ©1997 khara/Project EVA After stepping through the venue’s atmospheric entrance, the first thing you’ll see is a huge Evangelion Unit-01 figure standing against the panoramic backdrop of Tokyo. Illuminated with a special light arrangement exclusive to the Tokyo venue, this introductory space establishes the exhibition’s tone: a celebration of scale, craftsmanship and visual imagination. From here, the exhibition unfolds chronologically, tracing the development of the franchise from its earliest conceptual foundations to the expansive, technologically innovative productions of recent years. Photo: Sébastien Raineri | © khara/Project Eva © khara ©1997 khara/Project EVA Beyond the giant Eva, the prologue section introduces the earliest phase of creati