There’s no better time to escape Tokyo than the summer. While beaches and mountain retreats offer temporary relief, there’s another way to flee the capital: follow the art. From giant robotic insects in rural Aomori to a celebration of one of Japan’s most beloved manga artists in Tottori, these five exhibitions offer compelling reasons to venture beyond the usual museum circuit.
Tsubaki Noboru: FREEDOM — Living with “the Elephant in the Room”
Towada Art Center, Aomori
June 6 – November 8, 2026
Heading north is never a bad thing in the summer, especially when your destination is the Towada Art Center in Aomori. On view now is a new solo exhibition featuring works by Tsubaki Noboru. Best known for his monumental creatures and machines, Tsubaki uses oversized forms to examine environmental destruction, economic inequality, and the contradictions of modern life. His giant crimson robotic ant aTTA, permanently installed outside the museum, has become a recognizable landmark.
This new exhibition expands on those themes through large-scale installations and sculptures that confront what the artist describes as the social issues we all recognize but often avoid discussing. Presented within one of Japan’s most ambitious contemporary art museums, the exhibition offers a fitting encounter with art that is both playful and unsettling.
KAZAMA Sachiko: Clairvoyance in a 9㎡ Room
Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori
June 5 – November 15, 2026
While you’re in Aomori, be sure to stop by the Hirosaki MOCA, a beautiful museum that occupies a century-old brick warehouse that was once a sake brewery. The venue is hosting the first major solo exhibition in Tohoku of Sachiko Kazama, whose intricate black-and-white woodblock prints blend satire, history, politics, and popular culture into densely packed visual narratives.
Kazama presents both recent woodcuts and a new body of oil paintings inspired by Aomori’s landscapes and history. The result is a compelling exploration of memory, place, and the ways in which local stories intersect with national narratives.
Takehisa Yumeji: The Complete Works — The Painter as Poet and Designer
Niigata City Art Museum, Niigata
June 13 – August 30, 2026
Few artists embody the spirit of Taisho-era Japan as completely as Takehisa Yumeji. Celebrated for his melancholic beauties and romantic illustrations, Yumeji helped define the visual culture of the early twentieth century. Yet he was far more than a painter. He was also a poet, illustrator, novelist, graphic designer, and entrepreneur whose work continues to influence Japanese aesthetics today.
Niigata City Art Museum presents approximately 200 works drawn primarily from the renowned Kawamura Collection, now housed at Kyoto’s Fukuda Art Museum. The exhibition traces the full breadth of Yumeji’s creative output, from iconic paintings and illustrations to book designs, sheet music covers, decorative papers, stationery, and literary manuscripts.
ROJO [Shared Ground] — Am I in Your Way?
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
April 25 – September 6, 2026
There was once, in Japan, a type of autonomous space known as kugai (公界): realms exempt from the dictates of fixed systems and state authority. Open to travelers and performers alike, these spaces served as hubs that fostered culture and exchange. Today, these spaces are known as rojo (shared ground) and, in 1986, architect Terunobu Fujimori and artist Genpei Akasegawa founded The Rojo Society as a vessel for communicating the inherent richness of rojo while embedding a critique of cities homogenized by development.
On the 40th anniversary of the society, this exhibition is presented across seven sections, each examining how we reshape what rojo can be through play, expression, and occasional acts of deviation. The show features works by 95-year old legendary street performer Gilyak Amagasaki, photographer Naoko Sakokawa, who shone an unflinching light on homelessness, artist Asako Tokitsu, who interacts with architectural spaces with her signauture monochromatic line structures, and much more.
Manga o Hiraku: Jiro Taniguchi Exhibition
Tottori Prefectural Museum of Art, Tottori
July 11 – August 30, 2026
The prolific Japanese manga artist Jiro Taniguchi, who passed away in 2017, left behind an immense body of work that continues to be admired both in his home country but also abroad. Best known for works such as The Walking Man, A Distant Neighborhood, and The Summit of the Gods, Taniguchi elevated everyday observation into a quietly profound art form.
Titled Manga o Hiraku (Opening Up Manga): Jiro Taniguchi, the exhibition features original artwork, manuscripts, archival materials, and programs that explore both his artistic process and lasting influence on graphic storytelling. Visitors will also find special events, workshops, and film-related displays connected to his work throughout the exhibition period.
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