4 Exhibitions to See in Japan This Week: Ugo Rondinone at Kiyomizu-dera, Hikaru Fujii in Plato’s Cave

1. The World Seen Through Miss Saigon: The Vietnam War and the Formation of Vietnamese American Literature (Waseda International House of Literature / Waseda University History Museum)

Tracing the Memory of the Vietnam War

Framed through the musical Miss Saigon (1989), this exhibition follows the history of the Vietnam War and its impact on people’s lives and cultural expression. While revisiting the historical backdrop—the closing days of the war in Saigon, the rift between North and South Vietnam, and the American intervention—it also turns to the experiences of those who left their homeland after the city fell in 1975. By setting a story familiar from the stage against the real events behind it, the show considers the war’s toll on individual lives.

The exhibition is organized in three sections, devoted to the history of the Vietnam War, the love and separation depicted in Miss Saigon, and the literature of refugees. Through the work of writers including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Monique Truong, Linh Dinh, Thi Bui, Ocean Vuong, and Kim Thúy, it delves into the memory of war and exile, the loss of home, and the realities of life in a new country. With armed conflict and violent clashes continuing around the world and refugee outflows now a pressing global concern, the show returns to history to look at these questions anew.

The World Seen Through Miss Saigon: The Vietnam War and the Formation of Vietnamese American Literature
Dates: Friday, May 1 – Sunday, November 8
Venue: Exhibition Room, The Waseda International House of Literature (The Haruki Murakami Library), and Temporary Exhibition Room, Waseda University History Museum (1-6-1 Nishi-Waseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Closed: Wednesdays, Thursday, November 5, and Friday, November 6

---

2. TOKAS Project Vol. 9 Reenactment of Being (Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo)

Life, Reenacted

A moment of life happens only once, but art can revive it through a living body. Marking 20 years of exchange between Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) and Seoul, this exhibition frames such acts of revival as “reenactment.” Working across sculpture, digital media, and performance, the five participating artists—Jae Pil Eun, Dohee Kim, Donghee Koo, Minha Park, and Arata Mino—historical events and personal experiences in light of the present, probing the nature of memory and being.

Drawing on research into the U.S. military base in Yongsan, South Korea, and the postwar occupation, Mino has written a new play, Greenhouse / Onsil, and stages it as an installation in which a stone, an iron wire, and a truck serve as the characters. The galleries also hold Kim Dohee’s Navel Strike, a bell sculpture that expands on her motif of the navel, and a moving-image work by Park Minha that addresses the relationship between technology and humanity.

TOKAS Project Vol. 9 Reenactment of Being
Dates: Saturday, October 3 – Sunday, November 8
Venue: Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo (2-4-16 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 11 a.m.–7 p.m. (last admission 6:30 p.m.)
Closed: Mondays

---

3. Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection × FUJII Hikaru WHOSE LIGHT? (Artizon Museum)

Rethinking History and Truth Through Light

Jam Session sets works from the Ishibashi Foundation Collection in dialogue with those of a contemporary artist. Its seventh edition features Hikaru Fujii. Through video and installation work grounded in meticulous research and fieldwork, he has long questioned the structures of history, power, and society. Here, he turns to Plato’s allegory of the cave in Book VII of the Republic and to its central theme, the equation of light with truth. Asking not what the light illuminates but who is casting it, he reconsiders how truth and history take shape.

Twenty-two works from the collection, by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Hanjiro Sakamoto, Jackson Pollock, and Alberto Giacometti, are shown alongside some ten works by Fujii, including videos addressing historical events and colonialism.

Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection × FUJII Hikaru WHOSE LIGHT?
Dates: Saturday, October 24 – Sunday, January 31, 2027
Venue: Artizon Museum, 6F Gallery (1-7-2 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo)
Hours: 10 a.m.–6 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Fridays; last admission 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (except November 23 and January 11), November 24, December 28–January 4, and January 12

---

4. Ugo Rondinone: shaping silence (Jōju-in, Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Kyoto)

Rondinone and a Kyoto Temple, in Dialogue

Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone works across sculpture, painting, and installation, taking nature, the body, and time as his subjects. Based in New York, he draws on materials and natural elements such as stone, wood, and light to explore the relationship between human presence and the environment around it. Organized by the London gallery Sadie Coles HQ, the exhibition is his first solo show in Japan. Set in Jōju-in, a subtemple of Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto, the show allows the temple’s architecture, history, and natural surroundings to resonate with the work.

On view are seventeen human figures made of stacked stone, a painting of the sun, and a sculpture of a monk. The stone figures draw on the inuksuk, a stone marker the Inuit have long used for wayfinding. Arranged within a setting of moss, trees, water, and light, the three motifs—monk, stone body, and sun—open up a space where body and landscape, mineral and spirit intersect.

Ugo Rondinone: shaping silence
Dates: Tuesday, October 27 – Thursday, November 12
Venue: Jōju-in, Kiyomizu-dera Temple (1-294 Kiyomizu, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto)
Hours: 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.

あわせて読みたい

• 5 Exhibitions to See in Japan This Week: A Da Vinci Painting Returns After 52 Years, Ann Veronica Janssens Makes Her Japan Debut