February 2025 events in Tokyo

The days may be getting shorter and colder, but even so, Tokyo doesn't turn into a dark and desolate place at this less than cheery time of year. In fact, as the city transitions from autumn into winter, millions of colourful LED lights are displayed in trees as well as on and around buildings, turning Tokyo into a sparkling wonderland...

Lace up your skates and glide around the capital's frosty selection of indoor and outdoor ice rinks

Experience traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints in motion at Warehouse Terrada this winter, as digital creative company Hitohata returns to Tokyo with a dazzling exhibition of works by many of Japan’s most prized artists, including Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige.

The exhibition is set to open on December 21 and will go on until March 31. Expect to see vibrant artworks come to life with surging waves, falling sakura petals and moving flowers and trees.

In addition to the digital exhibits, the museum will display a selection of famous ukiyo-e from the Edo period (1603–1867), making for a perfect chance to learn more about the art form’s history and culture.

Tickets are currently on sale online, with early-bird ticket discounts available from kkday, eplus and Lawson Ticket until Dec 20. 

Ryuichi Sakamoto, who passed away in 2023 aged 71, was one of Japan's most globally influential musicians and composers. He also had a talent for creating multimedia art and became a prominent social activist, concerned with pacifism and environmental issues.

For much of the past two decades, Sakamoto focused upon three-dimensional sound installations, and these comprise the bulk of this show. A series of these immersive large-scale works unfolds around the MOT's vast exhibition spaces to mesmerising effect. The outdoor 'Sunken Terrace', for example, plays host to a literal 'fog sculpture' titled 'Life-Well Tokyo', produced in collaboration with artists Shiro Takatani, of Dumb Type and Fujiko Nakaya. Inside several works draw upon the music that Sakamoto created for his 2017 album 'async', a recording that pursued asynchronicity in a bid to create entirely 'untraditional' music. Indoor and out, together these pieces form a poignant tribute to a much-missed member of the creative community. 

Cutting-edge technologies such as AI and the merging of virtual and real worlds are reshaping our planet at an ever-faster pace. A wider look back at human history, meanwhile, reveals that art and technology have always progressed in parallel: computer art, where the two spheres become truly enmeshed with each other, is the latest example of this. This boldly future-facing exhibition presents a selection of contemporary art whose creators have utilised AI, VR and game engines, as well as works produced entirely by generative AI. Together, these diverse exhibits explore radical new aesthetics, and revolutionary approaches to image-making.

Among works that alternate between digital and real space, highlights include enchanting video works by Japan's Asako Fujikura, in which she uses 3D graphic rendering to create virtual cities where industrial materials move around as if alive. Beeple, meanwhile, an alias of US artist, designer and animator Mike Winkelmann, presents 'Human one' (2021). This kinetic video sculpture is intended to represent the first 'human' born within the metaverse, as they travel through a changing digital landscape.

This exhibition is open until 10pm on April 29 and May 6.

The work of Kei Imazu, a Japanese-born artist now based in Indonesia, explores how technological innovations have the power to influence human perception. Now, with Imazu increasingly gaining global attention, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery presents her first major solo exhibition.

Tactile, 'traditional' artistic tools and materials meet digital imaging tech in Imazu's experimental approaches. Images sourced from a diversity of media are digitally sampled and processed, before being combined on canvas with oil painting. Elements from history and mythology, including those of her adopted Indonesia, join present-day concerns such as environmental issues and ecofeminism to form large-scale, analogue-digital collages that are truly of their time.

This exhibition is closed on Mondays (except January 13 and February 24) as well as January 14, February 9 and February 25.