Ota Memorial Museum of Art

Harajuku’s Ota Memorial Museum of Art dives into the playful, uncanny and fantastical side of ukiyo-e with ‘Animals & Monsters: Cute, Scary, and a Little Weird’. Bringing together 140 works shown across two exhibition periods, the show explores the extraordinary menagerie that populated the imagination of Edo-period (1603–1868) artists, from beloved household pets to bizarre supernatural creatures and delightfully absurd hybrids. Cats and dogs appear throughout the exhibition as affectionate companions, while foxes, elephants and octopuses take on strangely human gestures and occupations. One highlight is the museum’s rich collection of works featuring anthropomorphic animals, including famously humorous scenes of cats relaxing in soba restaurants, bathhouses and eel shops. Elsewhere, visitors encounter charming yokai such as dancing bakeneko, alongside more unsettling figures including demons and giant spiders. The exhibition also ventures into the delightfully irrational territory of Edo fantasy. Mythical beasts assembled from multiple zodiac animals, fish with human faces, animated medicines and coins, and tiger-stone hybrids reveal the boundless inventiveness of ukiyo-e artists and their fascination with the strange and surreal. Around one fifth of the works on display are newly acquired pieces being shown publicly for the first time, making the exhibition appealing even to longtime followers of the museum’s celebrated yokai- and animal-themed shows. Balancing humour,...