5 Exhibitions to See In Japan This Week: A Nam June Paik Retrospective, Jun Aoki and Richard Tuttle's Spatial Experiment

1. Yanase Takashi: Life is About Bringing Joy to Others (Setagaya Literary Museum)

Lives Before Anpanman

Known as the creator of Anpanman, Takashi Yanase graduated from the Tokyo Higher School of Arts and Crafts (now Chiba University) before being drafted into the war. On his return, he set out on his own as a manga artist, and went on to build a career that spanned poetry, picture books, illustration, design, and editing. He received the Weekly Asahi Manga Award for Bo-shi (“Mr. Hat,” a pun on the Japanese boushi, meaning both “hat” and “an unnamed man”) in 1967, and in 1973 became editor-in-chief of the magazine Shi to Meruhen (Poetry and Fairy Tales). That same year, he published the picture book Anpanman, which would go on to become a nationally beloved character, cherished across generations. The show marks the Yanase Takashi Memorial Anpanman Museum's 30th anniversary in 2026.

The exhibition is built around some 200 original artworks, arranged across six sections: “An In-Depth Look at Takashi Yanase,” “Manga,” “Poetry,” “Picture Books/Yanase Fairy Tales,” “Anpanman,” and “Epilogue: Life Is About Bringing Joy to Others.” Alongside original manga and picture-book art, it takes in his poetry and design work, using Yanase's own words — “life is about bringing joy to others” — as a way into the roots of his creativity. Throughout his life, Yanase kept returning to the question of why we are born and what we are here to do, and the show traces how he grappled with it through his best-known works and other modes of expression.

Yanase Takashi: Life is About Bringing Joy to Others
Dates: Tuesday, June 30 – Sunday, September 6
Venue: Setagaya Literature Museum (1-10-10 Minami-Karasuyama, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 10:00–18:00 (last admission 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (the following day if Monday falls on a public holiday)

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2. before the dog, behind the cat / Yurie Nagashima (Museum of Imaginary Narrative Arts)

Photographs That Cross Time

Yurie Nagashima, born in Tokyo in 1973, made her debut while still an undergraduate at an art university, winning the Parco Prize at the open-call exhibition Urbanart #2 for a series of nude photographs of herself and her family. She went on to earn an MFA in photography from the California Institute of the Arts. Her photographic work has received numerous awards in Japan, and her writing has received a literary award as well. Rather than treating photography as a record of events, she approaches it as a “trace” generated through relationships with people and time, using self-portraiture and snapshots to continually question the shape of self and other.

The show is built around three series: collage works, first exhibited in 2025, that layer photographs and drawings of cat onto earlier pieces; street snapshots taken in Shibuya in 1994; and a table-form installation made from monochrome prints of old negatives. Placing works from the 1990s through the 2020s side by side in a single space, the exhibition presents itself not as an archive simply preserved and put on display, but as a living archive, continually updated from the vantage point of the present.

before the dog, behind the cat / Yurie Nagashima
Dates: Friday, July 10 – Sunday, September 27
Venue: MINA (Museum of Imaginary Narrative Arts) (3-7-1 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11:00–22:00
Closed: None (open daily)

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3. Lee Kit, Masaya Chiba: to sweat (ShugoArts)

Two Painters in Correspondence

A two-person exhibition pairing Lee Kit and Masaya Chiba grew out of an exchange of letters between the two and conversations held at Lee's studio in Taipei. Built around new work by the artists, the show carries a process of thinking — developed through words, images, and sound — throughout the space. As two practices shaped by different working environments meet in the same room, a new set of relationships takes shape around painting as their common ground.

Born in Hong Kong and now based in Taipei, Lee has built a body of work that extends painting into space, drawing on light, video, sound, language, and found objects. Chiba, for his part, explores the relationship between painting and perception by repeatedly reworking motifs of his own making, familiar scenes, and past events. The show marks the first exhibition to bring together these two internationally active artists of the same generation.

Lee Kit, Masaya Chiba: to sweat 流汗
Dates: Saturday, July 11 – Saturday, August 22
Venue: ShugoArts (complex665 2F, 6-5-24 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11:00–18:00
Closed: Sundays, Mondays, and public holidays; also closed August 9–17 for the summer break

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4. Almost Sky: Jun Aoki + Richard Tuttle (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery)

Almost Sky: A Space Built by Two

An exhibition pairing the architect Jun Aoki with the artist Richard Tuttle. Aoki, whose works include the Aomori Museum of Art and the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art, has used architecture to continually question the relationship between people and space. Tuttle, based in the United States, has worked since the 1960s across drawing, sculpture, and installation, earning international recognition for work that resists fitting into any single genre. Rather than have Aoki simply design the exhibition space for Tuttle's work, the show is an attempt by both artists to build a single space together through sustained dialogue.

On view are three-dimensional works Tuttle made from construction materials such as void tubes and insulation, alongside furnishings, chairs, and lighting that Aoki fabricated by repurposing pedestals previously used in exhibitions at the same gallery. As the title Almost Sky suggests, the works prompt visitors to tilt their gaze upward and to one side. What comes into view there, and what it reveals, is left for visitors to discover in the galleries themselves.

Almost Sky: Jun Aoki + Richard Tuttle
Dates: Saturday, July 18 – Wednesday, September 23
Venue: Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (3-20-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11:00–19:00 (last admission 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (except July 20 and September 21); also closed July 21 and August 2

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5. Nam June Paik | The 20th anniversary of his passing (The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art)

Exploring Paik's Work, Floor by Floor

An exhibition marking the 20th anniversary of the death of Nam June Paik (1932–2006), the pioneer of video art. Paik studied aesthetics and art history at the University of Tokyo before moving to Germany, where he met John Cage (1912–1992) and, in 1963, unveiled the world's first work of video art. He went on to make many more works using television and video technology, exerting a major influence on the development of media art. The exhibition looks back on his career while also focusing on his relationship with Galerie Watari, the predecessor of the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art.

The exhibition unfolds across the museum's second through fourth floors. The second floor centers on Forest of Cage / Revelation of the Forest (1993), an installation built around live trees. The third floor presents flat works, including previously unpublished collage pieces, alongside three-dimensional works made with cathode-ray tubes such as TV Plant (1980), while the fourth floor features a light-based piece built around New Candle (1993). Across video, sculpture, and drawing, the show traces roughly half a century of Paik's practice.

Nam June Paik | The 20th anniversary of his passing
Dates: Sunday, July 19 – Monday, November 23
Venue: Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (3-7-6 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11:00–19:00
Closed: Mondays (except July 20, September 21, October 12, and November 23)

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