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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.
1 November 2013
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Koganecho Bazaar 2013
14 September - 24 November 2013
Between Hinodecho and Koganecho Stations, Keikyu Railway
(Kanagawa)
Sixteen artists and art groups, primarily from Japan and elsewhere in Asia, are participating in this year's iteration of the annual event held beneath and along the Keikyu tracks. The exhibits occupy the small buildings that used to serve as brothels in what was, not so long ago, one of Yokohama's major red-light districts. Among the bazaar's charms is seeing how these tiny rooms have been put to arguably more artistic use. But one also senses the watchful eye of the city fathers, who are clearly less concerned with art than with "cleaning up" the neighborhood.

Ukichiro Nakaya: Pursuit of the Physics of Form, Investigating Nature's Habits
2 September - 23 November 2013
LIXIL Gallery 1
(Tokyo)
Physicist and essayist Ukichiro Nakaya (1900-62) left a legacy of research, photographs, sketches, and film footage that appeals to students of the humanities as much as of the sciences. But perhaps his biggest fans are artists, those purveyors of the irrational -- which makes sense when you consider that artists and scientists both value the workings of the imagination. Nakaya's research on snow crystals and electrostatic discharge phenomena produced visual imagery that is indeed a powerful stimulant of creative thought.
Roppongi Crossing 2013: Out of Doubt
21 September 2013 - 13 January 2014
Mori Art Museum
(Tokyo)
While most of the artists selected for this show are in or around their thirties, there is also a healthy dollop of oldsters, among them Hiroshi Nakamura (81), Genpei Akasegawa (76), and Takuma Nakahira (75). This juxtaposition of generations appears a bit curious at first, but may be precisely the aim of the curators: to demonstrate how art history repeats itself, and interacts with itself.
Antigravity

14 September - 24 December 2013

Toyota Municipal Museum of Art
(Aichi)
Architect Ryuji Nakamura has created a wondrous installation of many small rings, made of piano wire, that together form a much larger ring, too vast for the eye to take in at once. The "antigravity" theme -- which adopts the perspective of architecture, a vocation fated to be eternally bound to gravity -- nicely complements the "awakening" theme of the Aichi Triennale that just ended in nearby Nagoya.
Exhibition as Media 2013: Shuta Hasunuma Works <soundlike 2>

2 - 20 November 2013
Kobe Art Village Center
(Hyogo)
An annual autumn show that has been introducing up-and-coming young artists since 2007, "Exhibition as Media" this year invites multifaceted musician Shuta Hasunuma to present a potpourri of events: performances, workshops, an exhibition, compositions for commercials and film, and a new musical release based on fieldwork in Kobe and Nairobi.
Souvenirs and Railroads

6 August - 24 November 2013
Railway History Exhibition Hall, Old Shimbashi Station
(Tokyo)
In 2001 the British Museum presented a small exhibition titled Souvenirs in Contemporary Japan. The current show in the reconstructed terminal that once housed Japan's first train station, Shimbashi, is the fruit of research by curators inspired, we are told, by the London show. A leaflet from that exhibition avers that the western image of Japanese tourists is one of package tours whose members purchase lots of expensive souvenirs. The Shimbashi show looks back on the history of domestic Japanese tourism and souvenir-hunting, from Edo-era pilgrimages to Ise Shrine to the popular Expo fairs of the 20th century.
Masaki Hirano: After the Fact

14 September - 9 November 2013
Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels
(Saitama)
Photographer Hirano's Money series consists of images of currency, blown up into high-res prints, from Japan's days as an imperial power: now-worthless banknotes, stock certificates for the Manchuria Railway, conscription insurance bonds. Other series on display share the theme of war: Holes made by bullets in houses in Bosnia; Bunkers that remain in Albania years after that region's conflict; and Windows destroyed in houses during East Timor's civil war.
Kazuo Yoshida: TB

30 August - 23 September 2013
hpgrp Gallery Tokyo
(Tokyo)
Though Yoshida's photographic works bear such titles as Sky Scape and Sheet Scape, they are not actual scenes of land, sea or sky, but digital "scapes" he creates by adding noise to his images, moving the paper during the scanning process, printing on ink-repellent transparent sheets to produce patterns of dots, and the like. The resulting compositions look uncannily natural.
SILENT@KCUA 2013
31 August - 8 September 2013
Kyoto City University of Arts Gallery @KCUA
(Kyoto)
The third annual charity auction held by Kyoto City University of Arts for the areas devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, this year's event attracted 291 participating artists -- students, teachers, alumni -- who contributed 674 postcard-size works. A silent auction in which bidders did not learn the artist's name until after their purchase, it proved to be an entertaining experience on a number of levels.
Yuko Kakehi: compendium of seasonal words
6 - 16 September 2013
Gallery 301
(Hyogo)
Painter Kakehi employs the techniques and materials of Nihonga. The dozen-plus works in this solo show were done on special washi paper and feature landscapes and plants. Not content to use the gallery walls, she also laid scroll-like works on paper across the floor. There is a lovely, translucent quality to the layerings of faintly blurred pigment in these paintings.
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