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## Popup
### Body
htmlText_3C84A07F_1E2F_EF6F_41A6_706F816847FE.html = AC-bu
DOLPHIN DOLPHIN’s Smile, 2020
Acrylic and gouache on canvas
AC-bu was founded by Tama Art University graduates Toru Adachi (b. 1976), Shunsuke Itakura (b. 1976), and former member Makoto Ando. The team brings their energetic, abbreviated style to illustration and animation, music videos, local advertisements, fine art, and even government voting campaigns. In 2014, they presented their high-speed picture show, Anzen unten no shiori (Safe Driving Guide), at Ars Electronica Animation Festival. One of their most popular characters, Iruka no Iruka-kun (Dolphin Dolphin-kun), which they designed in 2010, is shown here seated with a mysterious smile, in a pose evoking “a certain famous painting.
AC-bu
New Tribe, 2019
4’45”
Musical Artist - Powder
Animation - AC-bu
©2019 Beats In Space Records
Akira Uno
後の月 後シテならば 痩男（俳句）
Nochi no Tsuki Nochishitenaraba Yaseotoko (haiku), 2020
Digital print on canvas
(Original: Mixed media on canvas, 2020)
Akira Uno (a.k.a. Aquirax Uno, b. 1934) is one of Japan’s leading artists and illustrators with a career spanning six decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was involved with the Japanese underground art movement, and collaborated in experimental theater productions. Now, he is best known for his fantasized portraiture, often of timeless characters, rendered finely in pen and ink, though he frequently uses collage and bright colors. Many of his illustrations feature a mysterious female figure with eyes heavy with ennui. In this image, inspired by a haiku poem by Mutsuo Takahashi, a slender, sylph-like young man holds a crescent moon and a young woman wears a hawk headdress.
Awai
Flowers Bloom in Empty Places, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
Tokyo-based artist Awai (b. 1981) grew up loving to draw. Although he didn’t formally study art, in college, he majored in design. He still delights in the process of drawing, allowing himself to be led by his subconscious and emotions, so that his manga-style characters often express his own moods and feelings. While the images may reflect sadness or pain, Awai typically adds an element that offers comfort. In this work, he portrays the loneliness of a young girl with a few simple strokes and creates a setting that suggests destruction and loss. Beside the girl, however, a small rabbit provides companionship and solace.
Ayako Ishiguro
Powerful, 2021
Digital print on canvas
(Original: Pencil, sumi ink, and pigment on washi paper, 2021)
Ayako Ishiguro (b. 1973) is a self-taught artist and illustrator from Chiba prefecture. Her paintings and book illustrations typically feature monsters, shape-shifting animals, and other yōkai, or “mysterious apparitions” from traditional Japanese folklore and her own imagination. She is particularly well known for her illustrations of bakeneko, or monster cats. In 2016, she published a book of her yōkai images, which are at once fearsome, cute, and comical. In this work, entitled Chikaramochi, meaning “Powerful,” a stern-faced octopus mimics a mighty samurai warrior, wearing a hachimaki around his head and a loincloth around his waist and holding an ōtsuchi, or large wooden mallet.
Chika Takei
On and Off, 2021
Acrylic and gouache on canvas
Originally from Utsunomiya City in Tochigi prefecture, Chika Takei (b. 1982) began her career in illustration shortly after graduating from Illustration Aoyama Juku. Her highly stylized images of mostly female characters are colorful and moody, and over the years, they have been inspired by pop stars such as Britney Spears. Precisely detailed with extremely fine-point brushes, her figures are often playful and emotionally expressive. Her work has appeared in books, magazines, posters, online ads, official celebrity merchandise, and studio design for the Japanese television network TBS, and it has also been shown widely in art galleries.
Face Oka
Money than Green Grass, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
Born to a Taiwanese father and Japanese mother, Face Oka (b. 1985) is a largely self-taught artist/illustrator, who learned from other artists. Creating primarily by hand, he works in the realms of advertisements and magazines and the fashion industry, collaborating with brands such as Better, Human Made, Beams, Uniqlo, and Adidas. In much of his art, he satirizes the Japanese sense of conformity and tendency to avoid confrontation at any price. Here, a giant woman (with the skewed facial features of many of his characters) appears to embrace a bridge that runs through a forest, suggesting the human disconnect with nature.
Hajime Sorayama
TREX (A), 2020
Canon 12-color hybrid digital print on paper
Hajime Sorayama (b. 1947) graduated from Central Art School (Chubi) in Tokyo and worked in advertising before becoming a freelance illustrator in 1971. In 1978, Sorayama drew his first robot, and in the 1980s he gained much attention for his series of “Sexy Robots,” which he modeled after pin-up art. His precise, highly detailed, superreal images explore ideas of closeness and embody the human impulse to pursue beauty. At the same time, his robots encompass various important themes of contemporary society, such as racial boundaries, eternal life, and the fusion of technology and beauty. His images of robot dinosaurs similarly play with concepts of technology and chronology, history and sci-fi.
Harumi Yamaguchi
Tropical Fish, 2021
Digital print on canvas
(Original: Acrylic on board, 1981)
Harumi Yamaguchi (b. 1941) is a leading name in Japanese advertising; she pioneered the flat airbrush aesthetic that became closely associated with commercial illustration. Born in Shimane, she graduated in oil painting from Tokyo University of the Arts, and from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, she spearheaded advertising for the retail establishment PARCO. Her role with PARCO allowed her to portray an emerging cosmopolitan woman, freed from traditional feminine roles and empowered to define herself through consumerism. In her airbrushed designs, her women, popularly known as “Harumi Gals,” are often glamorous, strong, and active, confidently returning the gaze of the viewer.
Hideyasu Moto
Recosuke’s Long Vacation, 2020
Oil on canvas
Hideyasu Moto (b. 1969) is a self-taught artist who straddles the worlds of manga and painting. He became an illustrator in 1990 and five years later debuted as a manga artist in the magazine Garo, launching a style that he deliberately tried to make unfashionable. Moto’s love of music records inspired him to create Recosuke-kun, a manga featuring the character Recosuke (meaning “Record-lover”). In this scene, we see Recosuke standing by a pool holding the album A Long Vacation by Japanese musician Eichi Ohtaki, which was released in 1981. The album cover was designed by the artist Hiroshi Nagai (whose work is also in this exhibition). In this painting, Moto plays with the image on the cover to create a sort of trompe l’œil optical effect with the line of the swimming pool.
Hikaru Ichijo
Twins, 2021
Screen print on paper
Hikaru Ichijo (b. 1989) received her master’s degree in visual communication from Tokyo University of the Arts. In 2018, she began working as an illustrator. Her illustrations are featured in books, advertisements, and package design. Using techniques rooted in printing technology—typically Ben-Day dots—to explore color expression, she builds bold images of female figures with a fresh, contemporary pop aesthetic. She chooses not to draw their faces, freeing the characters from judgment based on shifting beauty standards. Instead, her women are strong and athletic and are often depicted from below, so they appear to tower over the viewer.
Hiro Sugiyama
Diana, 2020
Acrylic on canvas
One of the organizers and curators of the Tokyo WAVE exhibition and this JAPAN HOUSE touring exhibition, Hiro Sugiyama (b. 1962) is a Tokyo-based artist whose prolific output has included figurative and abstract painting, superrealistic portraiture, prints, photography, and collage. In much of his work, he explores points of intersection between dualities—life and death, reality and unreality, abstract and concrete, digital and analog—expressing the narrow space where opposites meet. In this work, a line-drawn classical image of the Greek goddess of the hunt, Diana, is set against a boldly painted abstract ground. The realistically rendered white string that zigzags over the canvas seems to further bind together these otherwise distant forms of artistic expression.
Hiroki Taniguchi
The Here, There, and Everywhere Flower, 2020
Mixed media on canvas
From Kawasaki City in Kanagawa, Hiroki Taniguchi (1957-2021) studied at Tokyo University of the Arts. He worked as an illustrator creating simple, charming, and often whimsical images that have graced numerous book covers, posters, and stationery items, and his work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions. Taniguchi considered Japan and his own Japanese-ness fundamental to his artistic expression, and motifs from Japanese daily life, such as rice bowls and chopsticks, vegetables, flowers, and folk gods, abound in his work.
Hiroshi Nagai
Untitled, 2021
Digital print on canvas
(Original: Acrylic on canvas board, 2003)
Hiroshi Nagai (b. 1947) is a self-taught artist from Tokushima on the island of Shikoku. As a child, he discovered painting through his father, who was an oil painter, and went on to work as a set decorator, while also developing his skills as an artist. Highly influenced by American pop art as well as the surrealist works of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, Nagai designed album covers for many Japanese recording artists (including a cover referenced in the work by Hideyasu Moto in this exhibition). Nagai is best known for his scenes of beaches, swimming pools, and coastal roads, rendered in vivid tones and often empty of people.
Izuru Aminaka
Cavalier, 2021
Acrylic on wood
Izuru Aminaka (b. 1968) is an illustrator based in Tokyo and Oita prefecture in Kyushu. After graduating from art school and working for an apparel company, she became an independent illustrator, designing book covers for numerous publishers and corporate advertisements. She currently lectures part-time at Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture. Often rendered in a dreamlike style with softly painted outlines and set against flat areas of transparent color, her works appear sweet but contain a hint of “poison.” They frequently feature unsmiling women, such as the one depicted here cuddling her Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Although the dog looks directly at the viewer, the woman stares into the distance as if wishing she were elsewhere.
Jenny Kaori
Life is Good, 2021
Digital print on canvas
Self-taught artist Jenny Kaori (b. 1987) works in animation, character design, and apparel, typically depicting the young people who inhabit Japan’s sub- and mainstream cultures. Using vivid colors—and a predominantly pink color palette—she creates strong, mischievous female figures who transcend gender boundaries and challenge stereotypes of femininity and girlishness. Here, a girl appears to have fallen out of a car and is surrounded by the contents of several boxes that have spilled out all over the ground. In one hand, she holds a scepter with a heart finial; in the other, she clutches cash. The image suggests a young person overwhelmed by consumerism.
Jun Oson
Good Friends, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
The work of Jun Oson (b. 1979) spans many fields, including book cover design and illustration, animation, product and clothing design, and print and web-based media. Based in Kamakura, Oson uses a playful pop-art style to explore motifs and themes that are universal and transcend time. Here, we see three out of four of his “Forever Friends” characters—Red Dog, Skully, and the green-faced Belo Belo—intertwined in a convivial wrestling match. These characters appear in paintings like this one, which are exhibited at contemporary art galleries in Tokyo, as well as on merchandise such as T-shirts and action figures.
Kahori Maki
Meditative Flower, 2021
Ink on Photoshop digital print mounted on acrylic
Kahori Maki (b. 1969) is a Japanese-born, internationally educated artist and illustrator who works in various media, including drawing, painting, video, and installation, and regularly exhibits in galleries. Using flowers or plants as motifs, Maki starts from a single drawing that she expands into more complex creations like this work, which is typical of her lavishly detailed and richly textured imagery. In her commercial work, she has designed for magazines, such as Vogue Nippon, and album covers, and has teamed up with fashion brands such as Comme des Garçons. She regularly switches between analog and digital methods and has been working in collaboration with Apple and Adobe Systems.
Katsuya Terada
Untitled, 2021
Digital print on canvas
(Original: Marker on canvas, 2017)
Katsuya Terada (b. 1963) is an illustrator and manga artist from Okayama. He calls himself a rakugaki artist (meaning a “scribbler” or “doodler”), as he likes to draw a little everywhere and all the time. As a manga and anime artist, he has designed characters for Japanese animated films and series, created artwork for several video games, and worked on American comics such as Iron Man and Hellboy. As an illustrator and artist, he pushes—with pens and digital tools alike—the boundaries of manga and art through the exploration of the line as it expands outward, building into elaborate clusters of motifs drawn from dreams, fantasies, and the natural realm.
Keiichi Tanaami
Shonen Tiger 01, Shonen Oja, Shonen Tiger 02, 2008
Silkscreen on paper
Keiichi Tanaami (b. 1936) is one of Japan’s leading pop artists. Since the 1960s, he has worked as a graphic designer, illustrator, and video artist, showing his artwork in numerous exhibitions in Japan and internationally. He is best known for his densely packed and colorful images containing scenes from his childhood during World War II, details from his dreams, and comical motifs from pop culture. While in New York in the late 1960s, Tanaami was inspired by Andy Warhol to challenge the role of the artist and art in the art world, commerce, and daily life. He has used his work to protest war and to decorate album covers and has trained many young artists at Kyoto University of Art and Design. These three prints were developed using original postwar-period picture book illustrations from Soji Yamakawa (1908–1992), author of the Shonen Tiger and Shonen Oja series. The posthumous collaboration between Yamakawa and Tanaami was part of a retrospective of Yamakawa’s work held in 2008, to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth.
Keiji Ito
Five Tones, 2020
Giclée print on canvas
Keiji Ito (b. 1958) is a Tokyo-based illustrator, graphic designer, and director of Unidentified Flying Graphics (UFG). Much of his work investigates the idea that things that seem ordinary at first glance may often conceal madness and psychedelia—such as the Jello mountain in this surreal landscape, which, along with the title Five Tones, is a nod to Steven Spielberg’s 1977 science-fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. To Ito, portals to other worlds lie hidden in our everyday spaces, and they can open suddenly and create a sense of incongruity; he tries to capture these moments for eternity in his paintings. Ito has had numerous solo exhibits, taken part in domestic and international shows, and produced several publications, including his latest work, FUTURE DAYS.
Kenichiro Mizuno
Casual Existence, 2000
Acrylic on canvas
During his childhood, Kenichiro Mizuno (b. 1967) was strongly influenced by the Japanese anime he watched on television. Later, during his student years at Tottori University and Setsu Mode Seminar in Tokyo, his visual interests shifted to cult movies and contemporary art. Mizuno evolved a personal style as an artist, absorbing inspiration from magazines and art gallery visits. Consequently, his works pull from multiple sources, and he uses a range of media—drawing, painting, graphics, and animation—to capture his unique, quirky vision."
Kenichiro Mizuno
DIET BUTHCHER SLIM SKIN, 2005
5’10”
Video for Japan-based fashion house Diet Butcher Slim Skin
Animation - Kenichiro Mizuno
Music - 裏HIROKI & THE 花嫁
Kimi Kuruhara
Shinobi, 2021
Oil on canvas
Kimi Kuruhara (b. 1963) draws inspiration from sources as diverse as the natural world, medieval Christian art, and manga and anime from the 1960s and 1970s. Based in Nagano, where she also paints and crafts dolls, Kuruhara describes her work as having no specific direction. Rather, many of her images are born from ideas that pop into her head suddenly, like a story that she is sharing with a friend. Her rich imagination can be seen in this whimsical painting of a shinobi (another name for a ninja) swimming at night in a castle moat with a knife in his mouth. He moves so stealthily that he does not wake the sleeping ducks or cause a single ripple on the water’s surface.
Kintaro Takahashi
April Girl, 2021
Digital print on canvas
Kintaro Takahashi (b. 1955) is from Matsumoto City in Nagano prefecture. While studying graphic design at Tama Art University in Tokyo, he became interested in illustration and now specializes in illustrative work with a delicate touch. In this painting, he portrays the face of a girl in April, using minimal brushstrokes and pigments—simply adding a deep red to emphasize and energize her lips, perhaps to suggest young love. Takahashi prefers to draw from his memory of his subjects, rather than directly from reality. He is an organizer of the WAVE exhibition in Tokyo and a curator of this JAPAN HOUSE touring exhibition.
Kosuke Kawamura
Untitled, 2020
Inkjet print and acrylic spray paint on tarpaulin
Kosuke Kawamura (b. 1979) was born in Hiroshima prefecture. After graduating from high school, he moved to Tokyo and trained himself to be a graphic designer. He now works as a designer, art director, and collage artist, influenced in part by American artist Winston Smith. He began using a paper shredder in his work, and it soon became an important element of his collaging, allowing him to create fine patterns and designs (some of which he has used in collaborations with fashion designers). He works in both analog and digital realms for his collaged designs, often bringing together live paintings and digital imagery to create pop and avant-garde art.
Kotao Tomozawa
slimeLXXV, 2021
Oil on canvas
Kotao Tomozawa (b. 1999) was born in Bordeaux, France. She came to Japan from Paris in 2004 and is currently studying at Tokyo University of the Arts, majoring in oil painting, while also exhibiting her work in galleries. Her portraits typically feature faces covered with slime-like substances. The texture, translucency, and softness of the materials are meticulously depicted, leaving the viewer to question the reality of what they are looking at.
Makiko Sugawa
Lace-up Dress, 2021
Pen, pencil, and acrylic on paper
Originally from Wakayama prefecture, Makiko Sugawa (b. 1974) graduated from Kyoto College of Art and went on to work as a designer. She developed a very refined style of drawing with slender, delicate lines and meticulous detailing. She specializes in female figures and dolls with limbs that appear to be attached with decorative joints and hinges. The women are strong and sensual, wearing lace and lingerie and exuding confidence and independence. Sugawa lost her leg to cancer and champions amputees in her work, sending a message that there is beauty and strength in physical imperfection.
Makito Takagi
Snap-49, 2021
Acrylic on canvas and panel
Makito Takagi (b. 1986) is a pop-art illustrator who designs quirky creatures seemingly constructed from random objects, or human or animal parts. Many of his monster-like cartoon characters pose like superheroes in front of photorealistic buildings, walls, verandas, and other settings, resulting in ambiguous images that straddle the line between reality and the virtual realm. Through his skillful use of light and shading, Takagi creates works that appear like snapshots of these imagined creatures in the real world, evoking vintage photographs of Nessie and Bigfoot. In this painting, he portrays a curious character as if captured in the flash of a nighttime photograph.
Mariko Enomoto
Blue, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
Tokyo-based artist Mariko Enomoto (b. 1982) studied fashion, and today designs magazine and record covers and other commercial products. As a painter, she is self-taught, influenced by her great-grandfather, who was a Nihonga, or “traditional Japanese-style,” artist. Growing up surrounded by art and nature has informed her own painting style, and many of her figures interweave human and natural elements, such as animals and plants. Here, blue orchids grow over the eyes of a young woman, while a bee emerges from her mouth, an image that is at once elegant and surreal."
Masanori Ushiki
New Young, 2019
Giclée print and silkscreen on canvas
Masanori Ushiki (b. 1981) has worked in a broad range of artistic realms, from stationery and web design to illustration for varied clients, including Beams, Nintendo, Converse, Red Bull, Le Monde, and Park Hotel Tokyo. He is currently a freelance artist and illustrator best known for his colorful and often humorous, larger-than-life characters inspired by Japanese pop culture, anime, manga, and sci-fi from the 1980s and 1990s. With his groups of fashion-conscious girls and comical aliens, Ushiki aspires to create bold, authentic characters that will give viewers hope for the future.
Masaru Shichinohe
Doll Play, 2021
Oil on canvas
Masaru Shichinohe (b. 1959) majored in architecture at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, but soon after, he began a career as a professional painter. Largely self-taught as an artist, he has dedicated himself to capturing a nostalgia for the ephemeral joys of childhood, portraying young boys and girls in dark, often surreal settings. His works are laden with symbolism and silence and provoke many questions. Here, the image appears to be of a young girl sitting with a doll on her lap, on closer inspection, however, the scene unravels into something more dreamlike and mysterious.
Mayu Yukishita
Untitled, 2020
Ink and acrylic on canvas
Mayu Yukishita (b. 1995) studied graphic design at Tama Art University. She has been working as an illustrator for commercials, music, and book cover design, and recently founded her own fashion brand, Esth. As an artist, she works in a photorealistic style, creating paintings in oil and acrylic, as well as digitally. In some of her works, she also incorporates elements of manga style; in her portraits, for example, she enlarges the eyes slightly. The images, mostly of young women who stare boldly at the viewer, have a dark, moody quality to them, an emotional edge that elevates the work beyond realism.
Mayu Yukishita
Untitled, 2020
Ink and acrylic on canvas
Mayu Yukishita (b. 1995) studied graphic design at Tama Art University. She has been working as an illustrator for commercials, music, and book cover design, and recently founded her own fashion brand, Esth. As an artist, she works in a photorealistic style, creating paintings in oil and acrylic, as well as digitally. In some of her works, she also incorporates elements of manga style; in her portraits, for example, she enlarges the eyes slightly. The images, mostly of young women who stare boldly at the viewer, have a dark, moody quality to them, an emotional edge that elevates the work beyond realism.
Mayumi Tsuzuki
Family Portrait, 2021
Risograph on paper
In this print, Mayumi Tsuzuki (b. 1966) portrays a Japanese family posing for a standard portrait, with the wife in a floral kimono and the husband and children in Western clothes. Although the family is depicted with vivid colors, the mood of the image is somber given the subjects’ uneasy, distant facial expressions and the heavy shadow that surrounds them. Tsuzuki, who studied art at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, often addresses such ambiguity in her work. Typically, her pointillist-inspired images of daily life are at once bright and colorful and dark and unsettling, reflecting the complexity of our emotional lives.
(Note: Risograph is a Japanese brand of digital duplicators that are designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing.)
Megumi Yoshizane
Bitchu Castle—Matsuyama, 2021
Oil on canvas
Megumi Yoshizane (b. 1970) studied art at private school and university. In her oil paintings, she strives to capture the many moments that make up our world and our lives. Yoshizane paints scenes that fascinate her, such as this image of two visitors exploring the ruins of a castle. She ruminates on the scene while painting it in the hope that her work will represent the energy of the moment, whether warm and calm or lonely and anxious, and continue to release it forever. Yoshizane’s goal is to express this energy honestly, emphasizing the balance between light and shadow.
Mica Suga
Pretend Play, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
Originally from Oita prefecture, Mica Suga trained in fashion illustration and copperplate etching at a woodblock printing studio. As an illustrator, she creates paintings and paper prints, occasionally combining the techniques in collages made with scraps of fine paper that she collects and reuses. Many of her works feature women that are unsmiling and appear uneasy, as if viewing the world with distrust or emotional detachment. Her characters and scenes are typically quirky or absurd, as in this image of characters pretending to be foxes while embracing real foxes. Suga has shown in several group and solo exhibitions in Japan.
Motohiro Hayakawa
X Planet Battles, 2021
Acrylic and pen on canvas
Born in Yamaguchi prefecture, Motohiro Hayakawa (b. 1974) studied at Yamaguchi College of Arts and went on to work in illustration and comics. His illustrations are heavily influenced by the science-fiction adventures and cartoons of his childhood in the early 1980s as well as by American comic books and punk rock. In his highly imaginative paintings, Hayakawa employs a mixture of different textures, media, and techniques to create a world inhabited by giant plants with eyes, ancient warriors, vintage sci-fi heroes, aliens, robots, and bizarre monsters. In many of his works, these characters engage in comic-style battle scenes set in psychedelic, dreamlike landscapes.
Norishige Sasabe
Unknown Goggles, 2021
Pastels and colored pencil on paper
Norishige Sasabe (b. 1973) is best known for his nostalgic images of traditional culture and customs. In 2020, however, he began creating imagery that addresses the present and near future and issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, cloning, biotechnology, and virtual space. His new works, which feature color gradations (made with pastels) and rubbed-out areas, are darker in palette and deeper in tone, illustrating contemporary scenes and events through his own personal filter. Here, a silhouetted figure stands in beautiful natural landscape but is instead consumed by what he sees in his VR goggles.
Rina Yoshioka
Ecstatic Butter Chicken, 2016
Acrylic on kento paper board
Illustrator Rina Yoshioka (b. 1977) trained in art at Tokyo’s Tama Art University. She is inspired by the mood and aesthetic of Japan’s Showa era (1926–1989), especially the hand-drawn posters and magazine and record covers. More than being nostalgic for the Showa era, she is energized by the blood, sweat, and tears that went into creating art during this time. In this painting, an imitation of a commercial poster, she presents a Japanese woman dressed in a kimono apparently swooning before a dish of “Ecstatic Butter Chicken.” Butter chicken curry is an Indian dish that was invented in the mid-twentieth century but only became popular in Japan in the 1990s. A fan of curry herself, Yoshioka has playfully imagined a Showa-era advertisement for this dish.
Ryoji Arai
Snowy Theater, 2021
Acrylic and pencil on canvas
Originally from Yamagata prefecture in northern Japan, Ryoji Arai (b. 1956) is a Tokyo-based illustrator who has also worked in advertising and theater set design. He has earned worldwide acclaim for his wide range of illustrated books—from small books for toddlers to picture books of nonsense, fairytales, and poetry—that feature his unique and playful style. In 2005, he was the first Japanese author to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children’s literature for his “bold, mischievous style” and “musical” color sense. In this dynamic painting, a mysterious white-clad figure stands on a small, colorful stage with wings spread for a grand performance.
Sasaku Kusuriyubi
Lunch, 2020
Digital print on canvas
Sasaku Kusuriyubi is a painter based in Wakayama prefecture. The inspiration for her curious characters comes from her childhood in the countryside, where she observed that the insects, fish, and animals around her seemed to inhabit a world of life and death with no awareness of each other as individuals. Their unconscious activities became a symbol of freedom and equality for her and affirmed her own unique existence. In her art, she expresses this freedom through characterization, creating figures reminiscent of yōkai, the “mysterious apparitions” and monsters of Japanese lore. Here, a girl with magical, prehensile hair enjoys lunch in the company of her comical pets.
Shiriagari Kotobuki
A Short Break, 2021
Acrylic varnish on wood panel, partially scorched and coated with epoxy
Shiriagari Kotobuki (b. 1958) is a manga artist from Shizuoka. After graduating from Tama Art University in Tokyo, he began working in advertising, a career he continued until 1994. In 1985, he started creating manga, and ten years later, he launched a manga strip called Ereki na Haru (Electric Spring). Since 1998, Kotobuki has contributed his darkly humorous serialized manga strips to popular magazines, including Beam and AX, and several newspapers. He aims to create work that is loose, and somewhat lacking, but is still dear to his readers and often filled with humor. He teaches at Kobe Design University in the Department of Manga Media.
Shiriagari Kotobuki
Dog & Bone, 2006
4’28”
Planning and direction - Shiriagari Kotobuki
Animation - Toba Jungle
Featuring - Junko Nakazato
Support - Akane Taneda, Chiemi Kusano, Yuri Shimura, Yōhei Iketani, Takashi Kondō, Yasutoshi Kou, Akiyama Mimiko, Tomomi Kikawada
Planning and Production - Image Forum
Production - Saruyama Hagenosuke Co. Ltd.
©2006 Shiriagari Kotobuki
Saruyama Hagenosuke Co. Ltd.
Suzy Amakane
The Walrus from the Bookshelf, 1984
Acrylic on canvas and wood
As a child, Tokyo artist Suzy Amakane (b. 1956) enjoyed manga. When he was twenty, a David Hockney exhibition inspired him to become a painter. Amakane attended Tama Art University and went on to work in both the fine and commercial arts, blending his loves of manga and pop art into his own unique playful and colorful style. Many of his images feature mischievous young characters, visual puns, and pop-culture allusions. His work has appeared in magazines, on television, and on album covers and labels, and he has also shown in many exhibitions.
Tadanobu Asano
Untitled, 2021
Acrylic on paper
Actor, musician, and artist Tadanobu Asano (b. 1973) grew up in a creative family and began taking after-school art classes in kindergarten. As an artist, he enjoys capturing people engaged in various activities. He photographs himself working, sitting, and moving around, and then uses the images as the starting point for his paintings. In this group of four small acrylic works, the figures are set in flat, empty space, as in many traditional Japanese paintings and prints. However, by emphasizing the figures’ shadows and the folds of their clothing, he creates form and motion within the space.
Takeo Chikatsu
Chen’s Shoe, 2011
Acrylic on wood board
Takeo Chikatsu (b. 1963) worked for several design studios before becoming a freelance illustrator and designer in 1998. He is best known for his hyperrealistic acrylic paintings of familiar objects, such as bottles, food, flowers, and pencils, in which he explores time, surface, and what lies beneath. In 2006, he began his Shoes series—portraits of single shoes belonging to people in his life. Each shoe hints at the character of its wearer, such as “Father’s Geta Sandal,” “Tired President of Design Studio,” and “Chen”—a very shy and quiet Chinese foreign student who traveled to France to study with her adoring boyfriend.
Taro Uryu
Crane Suit, 2021
Giclée print on paper
Taro Uryu (b. 1980) is a Tokyo-based illustrator who has created a highly recognizable style of graphic expression for department stores, clothing brands, book covers, and magazines. Uryu’s female figures are simple and often geometric in form, with long limbs, tiny round mouths, and wide blue eyes, which the artist explains represent the sea and sky. Many of his women wear clothing inspired by the shapes and colors of objects, birds, and animals, such as calico cats and red-crested cranes, as in this image. He eliminates the figures’ facial expressions, giving them the sereneness and majesty of a Buddha image that transcends joy, sadness, and other emotions.
Teruhiko Yumura
Untitled (Mr. George), 2021
Giclée print on paper
Tokyo-based artist Teruhiko Yumura (b. 1942) is an illustrator, designer, manga artist, and music critic, who graduated from Tama Art University’s Department of Graphic Design. He was one of the pioneers of the heta-uma aesthetic (“poorly drawn but well-conceived”) of Japanese illustration, in which artists create imagery that intentionally looks poorly drawn. In the 1970s and 1980s, Yumura drew covers for the magazine Garo, which specialized in alternative and avant-garde manga. He was influenced by both Japanese and American comic books and has collaborated with numerous Japanese short comics and the American magazines Wet and Raw. He uses several pen names, including Terry Johnson, as in the works in this exhibition, and is often referred to as “King Terry.”
Toru Kageyama
Sharaku, 2013
Acrylic and gouache on plywood
Toru Kageyama (b. 1958) is an artist and illustrator originally from Aomori prefecture and is best known for his numerous book cover designs. His works show a variety of influences, including realism, the manga/anime style, and European and Chinese landscapes. In this painting, named after the mysterious artist Sharaku, who designed a series of kabuki actor prints in the late nineteenth century, the influence of Japan’s ukiyo-e woodblock print tradition is apparent. The central image is the interior of a kabuki theater, with the actors on stage in the distance and a large character from one of Sharaku’s prints on the left.
Yoko Kawamoto
Untitled, 2011
Oil on canvas
From Oita prefecture, Yoko Kawamoto (b. 1967) is a self-taught artist working primarily in oil on canvas in a photorealistic style. She focuses on ordinary daily scenes and underrepresented vistas that are not typically noticed or painted—museums, junkyards, sunlit suburban streets, and urban traffic. By portraying these mundane scenes with careful attention to detail, form, and lighting, she elevates each into something fascinating and important. Here, a view of a mountain of sand (mined from the sea), with cloth and tires strewn around the foreground, becomes a mysterious and intriguing landscape worthy of our attention.
Yu Nagaba
Mona Lisa, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
Yu Nagaba (b. 1976) is a Tokyo-based illustrator who attended Tokyo Zokei University but learned art “everywhere.” In his art, he favors simple line drawings over color and detail, opting for quality over quantity. He creates work for advertising and books, collaborates with apparel brands, and has shown in solo exhibitions in Japan and abroad. In 2014, he developed his current artistic style of line drawings with black ink on a white ground. He has made a series of drawings on a memo pad from the Ace Hotel in New York, where he stayed in 2013, and has created similar works on canvas, greatly enlarging the original memo pad.
Yuichi Yokoyama
The Room of the World Map, 2012
Digital print on tarpaulin banner
Originally from Miyazaki prefecture, Yuichi Yokoyama (b. 1967) studied oil painting at Musashino Art University and after graduating began to draw manga as his preferred mode of expression. In what he describes as “drawing time,” Yokoyama aims to create a sense of time and space using features unique to manga. Instead of dialog, he uses onomatopoeic phrases such as “do do do do” and “wa-.” Characters move freely and seemingly with speed, within highly rhythmic and often geometric compositions. Yokoyama calls his style “neo-manga”—a new style of manga that can overcome the limits of a two-dimensional media to depict time and space.
Yuji Moriguchi
A-Un, 2016
Acrylic and gesso on canvas
(Courtesy Gallery Tsubaki)
In the elaborately detailed paintings of Yuji Moriguchi (b. 1971), mysterious and captivating young women hold center stage. Greatly influenced by the ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period (1603–1868), Showa era (1926–1989) imagery, and fantasy, horror, and eroticism, his works evoke a sense of nostalgia for Japanese traditional culture. In this pair of paintings, two schoolgirls sit astride komainu statues, the lion-dog figures who guard Japanese Buddhist temples. The title A-Un is the Japanese version of the Indian sacred spiritual symbol “Om.” One lion’s mouth opens, saying “A” (representing the beginning of all things), while the other’s mouth is closed, saying “Un” (for the end).
Yuji Moriguchi
大団円 (Daidan’en / The Finale), 2021
Digital print on adhesive canvas
(Original: Acrylic and gesso on canvas, 2017)
Yusuke Hanai
Down But Not Out, 2020
Silkscreen on paper
The work of Yusuke Hanai (b. 1978) ranges from website design to collaborations with clothing brands like Beams and Vans to illustrations for surfing magazines. Considered a counterculture artist, Hanai has long been attracted to the beatnik and hippie culture of San Francisco, where he lived and studied art for several years. His drawings typically depict ordinary, often slightly alienated people doing their best to cope, encouraging each other, and finding their way. The figure in Down But Not Out, which has been reproduced as a painting, print, and limited-edition figurine, embodies the spirit of resilience visible in much of Hanai’s work.
Yusuke Saitoh
Chack and the Girl, 2019
Giclée print on canvas
Yusuke Saitoh (b. 1978) is an illustrator from Kanagawa. Trained at the Vantan Design Institute in Tokyo, he produces realistic digital paintings and animations, many of which have been featured in the music, film, fashion, advertising, and publishing industries, both internationally and in Japan. In addition to drawing characters for these creative fields, he also makes work that expresses the struggles that he has faced personally as an artist. His process allows him to explore the various possibilities of art and discover his own potential.
Yutaka Hirai
Black & White, 2021
Acrylic and medium on canvas
Based in Kamakura, Yutaka Hirai (b. 1976) is a self-taught artist who works largely in acrylic. Much of his art is figurative and at times verges on the surreal, with curious juxtapositions of motifs and settings in a rich color palette. Through his paintings, he often aims to convey personal struggles and emotional challenges. In this work, however, he has forgone color and figures for a monotone abstraction that is more expressive than representational, marbling together the opposing tones so that they harmonize in a vibrant, almost musical composition.
oki-chu.
Space Dog, 2021
Acrylic on paper
oki-chu. (b. 1979) works in an art style known as automatism, in which the subconscious guides the artist’s creative process. He begins in pencil, letting himself draw lines without thinking, and then finds forms and motifs in the work that he brings out in pen. In college, he encountered French comics and the work of Dutch artist M. C. Escher, yet his primary influences are the manga, anime, and video games of his youth and the artists with whom he engages at mograg gallery, the Tokyo art space that he runs with his wife, Motoko Ohta.
tupera tupera
Panda Bathhouse, 2021
Digital print on canvas
(Original: Pencil and pen on paper, 2013)
The artistic duo tupera tupera have created some of Japan’s most popular children’s books, including Shirokuma no pantsu (Polar Bear’s Underwear), which won the 2014 Prix du Livre Jeunesse Marseille. The Tokyo-based husband-and-wife design team, Tatsuya Kameyama (b. 1976) and Atsuko Nakagawa (b. 1978), trained in oil painting at Musashino Art University and textile dyeing at Tama Art University, respectively. Their colorful, whimsical illustrations are born out of their playful approach to their work. The painting here is the cover image for the children’s book Panda Sentō (Panda Bathhouse), which follows a panda family as they visit a traditional Japanese bathhouse.
Graphic art and illustration have a long history in Japan and are vibrant forces in Japanese culture today. Although many Japanese postwar artists were influenced by Western art and media, today’s graphic artists and illustrators draw from many different sources, including traditional Japanese painting and print designs, folk art, photography, architecture, fantasy, and pop art. These artists often bridge the world of illustration in books, magazines, comics, and posters, and even outsider art, with the world of fine art.
The exhibition WAVE presents the rich and varied work of fifty-five Japanese contemporary artists in the media of drawing, painting, and animation. Their creations extend far beyond the realms of manga and anime and represent a diverse and expressive art scene little known outside Japan. Curated by illustrators Kintaro Takahashi and Hiro Sugiyama, WAVE is based on the popular annual art exhibition of the same name, which has been held at Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo since 2018 and each year highlights works by over one hundred of Japan’s leading illustrators, designers, and graphic and contemporary artists.
This Japan House Touring Exhibition brings a broad and varied selection of these works to an international audience for the first time, showcasing the range of styles and designs being explored by Japanese illustrators and graphic artists today and creating new inspiration for artists worldwide tomorrow.
Hiro Sugiyama
Kintaro Takahashi
Exhibition curators
#WAVEnaJHSP
Japan’s Graphic Art Tradition
Although the lines in Japanese graphic arts and illustration are bold and vibrant, the boundaries between art and illustration—and artist and illustrator—traditionally have been blurred. Japan’s best-known artist, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was a print designer and an illustrator of popular woodblock-printed books, as well as a highly respected painter. He designed the world-famous print, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” and illustrated popular novels, but he also painted lavish works that hung in the homes of the wealthy.
In more recent times, Japan’s graphic artists and illustrators have also straddled multiple artistic realms. After World War II and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, illustration became an artistic profession in Japan, with many artists producing manga (comic books) and anime (animated films and television shows) and working in graphic design. In the 1980s and early 1990s, as Japan’s economy experienced a boom, many of the country’s leading graphic artists flourished in book illustration and advertising, and some began to present their work in art exhibitions. Drawing from sources as diverse as Western pop art and photorealism and Japan’s own popular woodblock prints and folk arts, these artists evolved a rich stylistic vocabulary and gained increasing international renown. Digital technology and computer-generated imagery have offered new creative possibilities in recent decades. Since 2010, however, artists have returned to analog forms of expression, spawning a new surge of inspiration and innovation, as can be seen in this exhibition.
With the proliferation of contemporary art galleries in Japan, illustrators often show their work alongside so-called fine artists. Interestingly, there are no Japanese language equivalents for the words “illustrator” and “graphic artist”—only transcriptions of these English terms. Since many Japanese artists who work in illustration inhabit diverse and fluid artistic spaces, they prefer not to limit their artistic identity with such labels. They simply call themselves sakka (作家) in Japanese, meaning “artist.”
Styles that influence contemporary Japanese graphic arts
WAVE features veteran artists and newcomers working in a variety of styles. Some of the most influential are:
Manga/Anime
Illustration for Japanese comic books, or manga, has deep roots in twelfth-century painted picture scrolls, premodern woodblock prints and books, and early twentieth-century magazines. After World War II, influenced by American comic books and cartoons, a modern manga style evolved with visual conventions that continue today in Japanese comic books and in Japanese animation, or anime. The popular manga/anime style features strong lines, expressive dialogue bubbles, unique frames, and abstract background mood effects. Characters are given large eyes, small mouths, and emotional detailing, like sweat drops for anxiety, popping veins for anger, and bold parallel lines for horror or disgust. In this exhibition, artists working in this style include Kenichiro Mizuno, Katsuya Terada, and Motohiro Hayakawa.
Heta-uma
In the 1970s, an underground manga movement began with the magazine Garo, in which artists created illustrations that intentionally looked poorly drawn compared to the slick aesthetic of mainstream manga. Known as heta-uma (“poorly drawn but well-conceived”), the style was pioneered and championed by Teruhiko Yumura, Yoshikazu Ebisu, and Takashi Nemoto, and has validated the work of many of today’s young manga and graphic artists, whose works seem unpolished but are very emotionally expressive. In this exhibition, although his style is highly refined, artist Suzy Amakane embraces the spirit of heta-uma.
Pop Art
The pop art movement that emerged in the 1950s in the U.S. and U.K. reached Japan soon afterward. Andy Warhol’s ability to bridge the commercial and fine art worlds inspired Keiichi Tanaami, whose bold, dynamic designs are packed with dreamlike figures, popular motifs, and powerful characters. Similarly, the fantastical battles scenes of Motohiro Hayakawa evoke the psychedelic pop art of the 1960s and 1970s. Harumi Yamaguchi’s glossy images of strong, liberated women graced Japanese ad campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, while Hiroshi Nagai’s vivid poolside scenes became iconic images, appearing on album covers in the 1980s.
Photorealism
The photorealism movement evolved in U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s from pop art, largely in response to abstract expressionism and the abundance of photography. It also inspired Japanese artists including Hajime Sorayama, who has depicted female robots and mechanical dinosaurs with luminous detail, and Yoko Kawamoto, who elevates junk piles and quarries into hyperrealistic landscapes. More recently, Mayu Yukishita re-creates a darker reality in her “superreal” paintings.