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Picks is a monthly sampling of Japan's art scene, offering commentary by a variety of reviewers about exhibitions at museums and galleries in recent weeks, with an emphasis on contemporary art by young artists.
2 May 2013
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Shigeru Ban -- Architecture and Humanitarian Activities
2 March - 12 May 2013
Art Tower Mito
(Ibaraki)
Active in projects all over the world, architect Ban is known for his use of unorthodox building methods and materials, notably paper tubes, in everything from public buildings to temporary housing for refugees and disaster victims. This retrospective is not so much a showcase for artistically conceived models and drawings or abstract concepts as it is an attempt to provoke thought about structures, materials, and spaces through the presentation of actual objects.

Dawn of Japanese Photography: Hokkaido and Tohoku

5 March - 6 May 2013
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
(Tokyo)
The fourth installment of the museum's "Dawn" series, this exhibition features photographs of the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions taken during the last years of the Shogunate and the early Meiji period (1868-1912). Numerous photographers of note plied their craft in Japan's northern reaches, among them Matsusaburo Yokoyama, Kenzo Tamoto, Seiichi Takebayashi, Hanzo Sakuma, Shingaku Kikuchi, Tamiji Shirosaki, and Kohei Yasu (who also worked in Guatemala). The 500 images selected from this trove are well worth checking out. The final section of the show is a special collection of photos chronicling natural disasters of the Meiji era.
Sakubei Yamamoto: Documentary Illustrations of the Coal Mining Industry
16 March - 6 May 2013
Tokyo Tower 1F Tower Hall
(Tokyo)
This exhibition held in the building at the foot of Tokyo Tower introduces the remarkable oeuvre of Sakubei Yamamoto (1892-1984), the first Japanese to be listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. A native of Kyushu, Yamamoto went to work in the coal mines there at age seven. After his retirement 50 years later, he began painting a record of his memories of the mines. "There is only one lie in my pictures," he would say. "The mines are pitch-dark, so you can't see colors there the way I have painted them." That quibble aside, his depictions of the coal miner's life are stunning in their realism and detail.
U30 Young Architect Japan

8 March - 31 May 2013
AGC studio
(Tokyo)
The winner of this competition in glass architecture by seven under-30 architects was Takashi Yonezawa of Nagoya. The exhibition features a full-scale model of his Glass Pavilion, a small structure composed of what look like fish scales of clear glass. In the ambient image on display, the pavilion appears to be in the middle of a forest -- a romantic sensibility that seems to be shared by many of his generation.
Kunio Okawara Exhibition: Legend of Mechanical Design

23 March - 19 May 2013
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art
(Hyogo)
This retrospective of Okawara's four-decade career as Japan's, and arguably the world's, first and greatest mecha-designer will warm any otaku's heart. Okawara's robots and other anthropomorphic machines appear in such anime hits as Gatchaman (1972), Yatterman (1977), and of course his tour-de-force, Mobile Suit Gundam (1979). Taking a laudably multifaceted approach to Okawara's accomplishments, the show highlights not just his designs, but the social and historical backdrop to each work.
Jakuchu's here! The joy and beauty of Edo painting from the Price Collection

1 March - 6 May 2013
Sendai City Museum
(Miyagi)
At the suggestion of California-based Japanese art collectors Joe and Etsuko Price, an exhibition of some 100 works by Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800) and other Edo-period masters has been making the rounds of the three northeastern prefectures hardest hit by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami (the show's subtitle is "here to support and energize Tohoku recovery"). To help even very young visitors appreciate these masterpieces, some have been labeled with slightly different titles: Jakuchu's Birds, Animals, and Flowering Plants in Imaginary Scene is now Flowers, Trees, and Animals Are All Alive, while Tiger has become Tiger Licking Its Paw.
para-modeling / Chimerical Scheme of Paramodellia by paramodel

16 February - 6 May 2013
Maison Hermès
(Tokyo)
The two-man art unit paramodel (Yasuhiko Hayashi and Yusuke Nakano) has set aside its long-time obsession with colorful plastic model railroad kits to produce a completely different sort of installation. Suspended from the ceiling is an iterative structure of cubic volumes inspired by the systematic architecture of Renzo Piano, while other works reference the Crystal Palace of 1851 and Bruno Taut's City Crown concept.

KCUA Transmit Program #04 Kyoto Studio

13 April - 19 May 2013
Kyoto City University of Arts Gallery @KCUA
(Kyoto)
This is KCUA's fourth event at which artists from the many studio cooperatives scattered around Kyoto gather to share a single exhibition space. This installment boasts over 100 works by 88 artists from 17 studios. The show itself represents an opportunity to contemplate possibilities for more varied and innovative approaches to communication and community among artists.
Eri Kodera: Simple Magic
7 - 19 May 2013
Gallery Yuragi
(Kyoto)
This is Kodera's first solo show in five years. The full title, which roughly translates as "When you're big you might be able to practice some sort of simple magic," expresses, she says, her wish that her two-year-old child will grow up with hopes and dreams for the future. This reviewer looks forward to seeing how the artist's work has evolved amid these new circumstances in her life.
Roppongi Art Night 2013
23 - 24 March 2013
Various sites in Roppongi
(Tokyo)
This all-night event is a banquet of art that extends across four "zones" in the Roppongi entertainment district. This year's director was protean artist Katsuhiko Hibino, who came up with the theme "Trip-->Witness today's transformation into tomorrow," declaring that he envisioned "Roppongi as a huge futon with everyone tucked inside, sharing their dreams with one another, while time wanders around this way and that."
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