Posted:Mar 15, 2019

10 Things in Tokyo: March 2019

Events and exhibitions happening this month in Tokyo and beyond

Kyosai Kawanabe (L) 'Bishamonten (Vaisravana)' (1848), (R) 'Frog Rickshaw and Postman', Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum
Kyosai Kawanabe (L) 'Bishamonten (Vaisravana)' (1848), (R) 'Frog Rickshaw and Postman', Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum

Art fair season returns to Tokyo! Of course there’s the big-tent AFT, but we’d also like to mention 3331 Art Fair 2019, held March 6–10 at 3331 Arts Chiyoda. As in past years, you can take home a piece of the Japanese contemporary art scene in affordable price ranges. Choose from works by established and rising-star artists represented by galleries from across the country.

Theater Commons Tokyo is an omnibus of drama, readings, and other events around the city. The multilingual program includes Koki Tanaka’s short film “Vulnerable Histories (A Road Movie)” about tensions and reconciliation between Zainichi Koreans and the Japanese. (In English). We Mourn the Dead of the Future by Meiro Koizumi is a stark consideration of nationalism, heroism, and self-sacrifice. (In Japanese). The festival ends March 13.

The New York-based exonemo has been a leader in internet art for some 20-odd years. Waitingroom presents LO, the duo’s first exhibit in Japan in six years showing new and remixed screen installations concerned with the allusive phrase “Message Incomplete.” Ends March 24.

Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo features First Lingering Mist of Spring, a group exhibit spotlighting Masaharu Sato, Yu Nishimura, and Nao Yoshigai. Each contemporary artist experiments with landscapes, reinterpreting them as “physical, intuitive scenes in changing seasons.” Until March 24.

Two more takes on the landscape: Pairing Fukushima at Emon Gallery brings together Ryuichi Yahagi’s moseki stone sculptures and Uma Kinoshita’s documentary photography from post-3/11 Fukushima Prefecture. The Club shows Colorist contemporaries David Hockney and Heihachiro Fukuda in arrangements of quiet domestic scenes and sweeping natural vistas. Both exhibitions end March 30.

Kawanabe Kyosai: Nothing Escaped His Brush at Suntory Museum of Art surveys the prolific output of a Nihonga painter who detailed the mid-19th century change between the Edo and Meiji periods. He did so with imaginative genius, technical prowess, gentle humor, fierce satire, and also a twinge of melancholy. Growling ogres and frolicking animals are crowd pleasers, but keep on eye on how this well-curated show reveals the social and historical influences that drove Kyosai’s indefatigable brush. The English audio guide is recommended. Until March 31.

Leiko Ikemura, another artist fascinated by all creation, is the star of Our Planet – Earth & Stars at The National Art Center, Tokyo. This show demonstrates how her 40 years of painting, drawing, and sculpture-making have channeled both micro and macrocosms. It is a pleasure to get lost in what feels like the maze of an artist’s imagination, filled as it is with recurring motifs and wondrous surprises around every corner. Ends April 1.

Toshiko Okanoue offers a markedly different but no less immersive mindscape in Photo Collage: The Miracle of Silence at Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum. Okanoue’s mid-century assemblages of images pulled from fashion and news magazines read as candidly surreal portraits of an era. This show is eligible for discounts with the TAB and MuPon apps. Through April 7.

Hiratsuka Museum of Art in Kanagawa Prefecture hosts Hiroko Tsuchida’s Where There’s a Will There’s a Way. Tsuchida’s intricate and stunning sculptures painstakingly crafted from Q-tips, combs, and other seemingly inconsequential objects are testaments to the exhibition’s title. Through April 7.

Jennifer Pastore

Jennifer Pastore

Jennifer Pastore is a writer, editor, and translator. She was editor of Tokyo Art Beat's web magazine from 2015 to 2022. Her thoughts on the Japanese art scene can be found in publications like artscape Japan.