15 best art exhibitions in Tokyo right now

Martin Margiela is one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in contemporary creative culture. The Belgian rose to prominence with the founding of Maison Martin Margiela in 1988, redefining fashion through deconstruction, anonymity and radical reinterpretation of form. Having left the fashion industry in 2008, Margiela turned fully toward visual art, where he continues to explore themes of the human body, absence, time, transformation, and the poetry of the overlooked

Showing from April 11 to April 29, ‘Martin Margiela at Kudan House’ marks the artist’s first large-scale solo exhibition in Japan. Set within a registered cultural property completed in 1927, the exhibition unfolds as a series of ephemeral installations staged throughout the historic residence. Margiela was drawn to the charged contrast between contemporary artworks and the intimate atmosphere of a lived-in architectural space.

Collage, painting, drawing, sculpture, assemblage and video coexist across the mansion’s rooms, inviting visitors into a close and contemplative encounter with the works. Reuse, fragmentation and metamorphosis remain central concerns, as everyday materials are subtly transformed into poetic propositions. Conceived and curated entirely by the artist, the exhibition reflects Margiela’s enduring desire not to provide answers, but to pose questions, with disarming intimacy.

Internationally recognised photographer and film director Mika Ninagawa is hosting a solo exhibition at the homey and intimate DDDArt art gallery in Shimokitazawa this spring. Much smaller in scale than the likes of her recent projects in Kyoto, at Expo 2025 and Tokyo Node, the exhibition takes a step back to revisit Ninagawa’s body of work, from her early career to her latest creations.

Coinciding with the launch of her latest photo book with the same name, the exhibition brings the artist’s worldview to life in a physical space. As if the vibrant pages of the book were superimposed onto reality, the tatami-floored kominka folk house is reborn with shimmering crystal strands, red and pink paint splatters and super-saturated photo prints.

Running until May 31, the exhibit is only a short stroll away from Shimokitazawa, where Ninagawa herself spent over a decade in her formative years. Why not take a detour towards Sangenjaya for a creative journey on your next visit to the area?

Prepare your ponchos and panniers, as Harajuku J-fashion icon Sebastian Masuda has opened his first large-scale solo exhibition in years in Hyper Museum Hanno. The exhibition, running from March 14 to August 30, is packed with psychedelic candy-coloured installation rooms, art pieces and sculptures by Masuda himself, created over the years and brought to Japan for the event.

The exhibition unfolds across six themed spaces presented in a loose chronology, tracing Masuda’s formative experiences and how he arrived at his own understanding of kawaii after navigating personal conflicts.

While it’s taking place a bit outside central Tokyo, the exhibition offers an approachable but deep dive into Harajuku kawaii while prompting a look at where the culture is headed next. Be sure to visit the museum pop-up shop, which stocks exclusive T-shirts, stickers, omamori amulets and more.

Tickets are now on sale via Asoview, Artsticker, Lawson Ticket and Seven Ticket.

Donald Judd was one of the most decisive figures of twentieth-century art; an artist whose rigorous thinking reshaped the conditions under which art is made and experienced. Emerging from painting in the early 1960s, Judd developed three-dimensional works that rejected illusion and hierarchy, insisting instead on clarity, material presence and spatial integrity.

Beyond form, he was equally concerned with context: how, where and for how long a work should exist. His writings, architectural projects and advocacy for permanent installations reveal an artist for whom art could never be separated from its environment.

The Watari-Um’s ‘Judd | Marfa’ traces its protagonist’s radical vision through the lens of his life and work in Marfa, Texas. After leaving New York in the 1970s, Judd transformed former military and industrial buildings in the remote desert town into sites for the permanent installation of his own work and that of artists including Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain. These spaces, later formalised through the Chinati Foundation, remain preserved as Judd intended.

The exhibition brings together early paintings from the 1950s, key three-dimensional works from the 1960s to the 1990s, and extensive archival materials (drawings, plans, videos and documents) that illuminate Judd’s conception of Marfa as a total environment for art, architecture and living.

A special section revisits The Sculpture of Donald Judd (1978), organised by museum founder Shizuko Watari, underscoring the museum’s long-standing engagement with Judd’s legacy. Together, these materials articulate Judd’s enduring conviction that the installation of art is inseparable from its meaning.

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 ‘Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji from the Iuchi Collection’ marks the first public unveiling of this remarkable group of works placed on deposit at the museum in 2024.

The exhibition showcases all 46 prints from Hokusai’s iconic series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji (c. 1830–33), alongside two additional impressions of his most beloved masterpieces, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (commonly known as ‘The Great Wave’) and Clear Day with a Southern Breeze (known as ‘Red Fuji’). You can look forward to exceptionally well-preserved impressions, including a rare indigo-printed ‘Blue Fuji’ version of Clear Day with a Southern Breeze.

Bringing together all 48 works, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience Hokusai’s enduring vision of Mt Fuji within Japan’s premier museum of Western art – a fitting setting for appreciating his art’s timeless dialogue between East and West.

The historic Shiseido Gallery presents a tribute to the visionary graphic designer Masayoshi Nakajo. Five years after his passing, the exhibition revisits Nakajo’s long and influential relationship with the cosmetics company through around 200 works spanning more than four decades.

Nakajo played a pivotal role in shaping Shiseido’s visual culture, producing posters, packaging and advertising designs that blended playful experimentation with refined elegance. Visitors will encounter iconic graphics created for Shiseido Parlour, including biscuit packaging, wrapping papers and promotional posters, alongside original drawings shown publicly for the first time.

A central focus of the exhibition is Nakajo’s work as art director of Hanatsubaki, Shiseido’s influential cultural magazine. A special reading corner allows visitors to browse some 350 issues published between 1982 and 2011, offering insight into his distinctive editorial approach, where typography, illustration and photography interact in dynamic visual rhythms.

Known for his free-hand compositions and intuitive use of form, Nakajo once said he always chose ‘the design most likely to sing’. This exhibition captures that spirit, where letters become melody, images move like choreography, and graphic design reveals its expressive, almost musical potential.

Having spent over four decades redefining the relationship between art, technology and desire, Hajime Sorayama is one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Noted for his iconic Sexy Robot series and his pioneering fusion of human sensuality and mechanical precision, Sorayama’s work has influenced generations of creators across art, design and popular culture – from RoboCop to Dior. His visionary approach, uniting the sensual with the synthetic, has earned him international acclaim and a lasting place in the subcultural art canon.

Opening this spring at the Creative Museum Tokyo, ‘Sorayama: Light, Reflection, Transparency -Tokyo-’ marks the artist’s largest retrospective in Japan to date, following its acclaimed debut in Shanghai. The exhibition traces Sorayama’s artistic evolution from his first robot painting in 1978 to his latest digital and sculptural works. Visitors will encounter highlights such as the original Aibo robot design for Sony, the artwork for Aerosmith’s Just Push Play album, and an immersive installation that embodies Sorayama’s lifelong pursuit of capturing light, air and reflections.

By blending futuristic imagination with classical mastery, Sorayama invites viewers to contemplate a world where human emotion and machine form merge in radiant harmony.

The Artizon Museum invites art aficionados to immerse themselves in a vibrant space of dialogue and imagination with ‘Katarium’, an exhibition that explores art as a site of narration. The title combines the Japanese word katari (‘tell’ or ‘narrate’) with the suffix -arium, evoking a realm where stories unfold.

The exhibition seeks to reflect on the myriad conversations that surround artworks, from the artist’s private musings in the studio to the audience’s impressions before a finished piece. Through approximately 60 works spanning diverse eras and media, including two National Treasures, seven Important Cultural Properties and five Important Art Objects, ‘Katarium’ invites viewers to listen to these silent dialogues across time.

Highlights include Edo-period (1603–1868) folding screens thought to have been created for samurai lords, mythological paintings from the Meiji (1868–1912) and Taisho (1912–1926) eras, and poetic lithographs by the American social realist artist Ben Shahn. Additionally, traditional scrolls such as Zen Proverb Scroll Fragment and Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and Humans are reassembled from fragments, allowing visitors to witness ‘reunions’ of masterpieces long separated.

From the newly restored Illustrated Tale of the Heiji Rebellion: The Tokiwamaki Scroll to the mysterious Edo Tenka Festival Screens, ‘Katarium’ offers an evocative journey through Japan’s artistic storytelling, where each work whispers, greets and remembers across the centuries.

Hirohiko Araki began serialising JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in Weekly Shonen Jump in 1986, launching a saga that has since spanned decades, generations of protagonists and shifting aesthetic paradigms. Renowned for its flamboyant characters, bold compositions and philosophical undercurrents, JoJo stands apart for its synthesis of classical art, fashion, music and pop culture. With cumulative circulation exceeding 120 million copies, the series has become a global phenomenon, while Araki himself has become recognised as a singular figure bridging manga and contemporary art.

From January 8 to June 28, the Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage Tokyo Gallery presents this three-part exhibition that foregrounds Araki’s work through the lens of fine-art printmaking. The exhibition has previously been shown in San Francisco and Kyoto, but this marks the first time Araki’s lithographs and lenticular works are displayed in Tokyo.

To allow visitors to encounter as wide a variety of works as possible, the exhibition unfolds in three rotations: Part 1 (January 8–February 23), Part 2 (March 3–April 19) and Part 3 (April 28–June 28). At the heart of the display are nine lithographic prints, produced in 2025 at the request of Shueisha Manga-Art Heritage and representing Araki’s first foray into lithography. Unlike conventional manga printing, which reduces drawings to stark black-and-white data, lithography preserves the artist’s hand with remarkable fidelity. Drawing directly onto metal plates with lithographic pencils and chalk, Araki has embraced the medium’s irreversibility: lines cannot be erased, lending each mark a palpable tension and decisiveness.

The resulting prints, featuring figures such as Jotaro Kujo and Dio, reveal a new intimacy with Araki’s lines, from the controlled force of slow strokes to the rhythmic energy of rapid shading. Each work is produced in an edition of 100, printed by master lithographer Satoru Itazu.

Complementing these are lenticular works depicting protagonists from Parts 1 through 6 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Utilising a technique with roots in early 20th-century optical experimentation, these prints create the illusion of depth and motion, activated only through the viewer’s movement. As one shifts position, time seems to unfold within a single image – an effect that resonates with the manipulation of duration and perspective, a familiar technique in manga.

Together, the lithographic and lenticular works position JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure as an evolving artistic practice – and one that continues to expand the possibilities of manga within the broader history of visual art.

Andrius Arutiunian (born 1991) is an Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer whose practice unfolds at the intersection of sound, ritual and speculative cosmology. Working across installation, performance and moving image, he approaches listening as a hybrid and political act, treating music as an architecture of distorted time. His work, shown at major international exhibitions including the Venice, Shanghai, Gwangju and Lyon Biennales, explores how belief systems, vernacular knowledge and collective rituals shape alternative models of social and temporal order.

‘Obol’, Arutiunian’s first solo exhibition in Japan, takes place from February 20 to May 31 at Le Forum. Presented by Ginza Maison Hermès and curated by Tomoya Iwata, the exhibition imagines a futuristic vision of the underworld, a speculative space where myth, sound and ceremony converge. Drawing on ancient cosmologies, esoteric texts and fragments of ritual, ‘Obol’ is conceived as a ‘club for the dead’, where time becomes viscous and hypnotic, and where the boundaries between past, present and future dissolve.

Central to the exhibition is a new body of work using bitumen, a petroleum-derived material once imbued with sacred meaning but now relegated to utilitarian use. As both material and metaphor, it anchors a meditation on Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, evoked through silver obols, serpentine forms and generative mythological imagery. Layered soundscapes weave through the space, binding playfulness and solemnity into a cold, ritualistic anthem. Through its speculative and immersive environment, ‘Obol’ invites visitors to step into a liminal journey that questions how future myths, rituals and afterlives might be imagined.

This winter, the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo presents a landmark exhibition tracing the evolution of Japan’s landscape printmaking from the twilight of the Edo period (mid-1800s) to the dawn of modernity.

At the heart of the survey stands Kiyochika Kobayashi (1847–1915), often called ‘the last ukiyo-e artist’. Published from 1876, his Tokyo Famous Places series transformed the traditional woodblock print aesthetic by infusing it with Western notions of light and shadow. Through his ‘light ray paintings’, Kiyochika, as he was known, captured the melancholic beauty of a city in transition, the lingering spirit of Edo illuminated by the glow of modernisation.

His vision, steeped in nostalgia yet alive with innovation, profoundly influenced the shin-hanga (‘new prints’) movement that emerged in the early 20th century under artists such as Hiroshi Yoshida and Hasui Kawase. These successors revived ukiyo-e craftsmanship while reimagining Japan’s landscapes for a new era.

Drawn from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, ‘From Kiyochika to Hasui’ reunites these masterpieces with their homeland, illuminating how light, both literal and emotional, guided Japan’s printmaking into the modern age.

The MOT will launch visitors into the mysteries of the universe with this groundbreaking exhibition running from January 31 to May 6. Marking ten years since the museum’s acclaimed ‘Mission [Space x Art]’, the new show expands the former’s scope in celebration of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (2025), bridging cosmic exploration with the ever-evolving field of quantum research.

The exhibition traces the origins of the world and the invisible forces that shape it through collaborations between artists, space scientists and quantum researchers. Alongside works inspired by astronomical investigation and spaceflight, the show will unveil the first artwork created using a Japanese quantum computer – a milestone revealing the expressive potential of a realm where conventional notions of time and space dissolve.

Visitors can expect a constellation of installations, extended-reality experiences and experimental prototypes by leading creators including Akihiro Kubota, Norimichi Hirakawa, Takuro Osaka, Yoichi Ochiai, Hideki Yoshimoto, JAXA’s research teams and many others. The exhibition also features a robust programme of talks by artists and scientists, encouraging audiences to imagine their own ‘quantum-native’ futures.

Bold, exploratory and visionary, ‘Mission∞Infinity’ invites you to witness how art continues to push beyond the boundaries of the known universe.

Johnny Depp may be best known for his eccentric on-screen roles, but long before fame, he was quietly building a collection of artworks. Now, more than 100 of his paintings and drawings – spanning from his early twenties to the present – are on view at ‘A Bunch of Stuff – Tokyo’, held at +Base 0 inside Newoman Takanawa South. 

The exhibition features five themed spaces, beginning with bold calligraphed quotes that hint at Depp’s mindset. Visitors are then led into a bohemian studio-style room filled with the actor’s personal objects and art supplies brought directly from his workspace. 

Other highlights from the exhibition include Depp’s signature ‘Death by Confetti’ series, where celebratory motifs meet skeletons to reflect the pressure of fame, as well as a video work making its Japan debut inside the immersive ‘Black Box’. Projected across a curved screen, Depp’s paintings come to life as he narrates his reflections on art, identity and the highs and lows of his long career.

Emerging in the wake of the Margaret Thatcher era, the Young British Artists (YBAs) and their contemporaries embraced shock, irreverence and entrepreneurial flair. While the YBA label (applied after the landmark 1988 ‘Freeze’ exhibition organised by Damien Hirst) was often contested, it came to define a generation that reimagined what art could be. Painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation all became tools for probing themes of identity, consumer culture and shifting social structures. 

The National Art Center’s ‘YBA & Beyond: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection’ is the first exhibition in Japan devoted exclusively to British art of the 1990s. Featuring around 100 works by some 60 artists, the show captures a turbulent and transformative period in British culture, when politics, society and art collided to spark a wave of radical experimentation.

Highlights include works by Hirst, Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen, Lubaina Himid, Wolfgang Tillmans and Julian Opie, alongside others who reshaped contemporary art on a global stage. More than a retrospective, ‘YBA & Beyond’ offers a vivid portrait of 1990s Britain, an era when art intersected with music, fashion and subculture, leaving a legacy that continues to resonate today.