10 Japanese Artists Who Are Shaping Contemporary Art

By Mika Maruyama

Compared with artists in neighboring Asian countries, Japanese artists, it is often said, tend to cultivate their creativity within a closed (and relatively smaller) ecosystem. Working under social oppression and stagnation, Japanese artists have developed distinctive art scenes across the country.

While Japanese contemporary art—especially from the post-war period—has attracted attention around the world and has been researched and contextualized within global art history and international exhibitions, it seems that the recent narratives are still limited. The spotlight is frequently placed on only six “star artists”—Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, Tatsuo Miyajima, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, and Hiroshi Sugimoto—who are successful internationally (and are currently celebrated in a show at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo). Therefore, the following list, while still failing to cover many prominent artistic practices, is intended to sketch out divergent Japanese streams of contemporary art.

Koki Tanaka Engaged Gesture, 2018, Spring Workshop

Cultural sectors in Japan are compelled to deal with the latent censorship of political and sexual expression. Such was the case with the Aichi Triennale 2019 in Nagoya, which brought discussions of gender-related issues in institutions out into the open, though part of the exhibition, which featured works that had been censored by public institutions, was shut down because of their critical references to the history of Japanese imperialism and nationalism. Japanese artists must also contend with the violence of the revisionist tendency and the amnesia of history within the country’s homogenized society...READ MORE

Cover image: Tadasu Takamine, God Bless America, 2002, URANO