Our spring issue has always been one of my favorites. Each year, we dedicate these pages to a specific region—an opportunity to slow down, look closely, and engage with the artists, designers, and thinkers shaping a place from within. This year, we turn our focus to Japan.
It’s an incredible honor to do so alongside our guest editor, Shohei Shigematsu. Through his work in architecture and his deep understanding of how space, culture, and daily life intersect, Shigematsu brings a perspective that feels both expansive and precise. His guidance has helped shape an issue that moves fluidly across disciplines—revealing the ways in which art, design, fashion, and architecture in Japan are deeply interconnected.
Across these pages, we encounter a shared sensitivity to time, material, and experience. In Japan, there is a profound awareness of impermanence—of the fleeting nature of a moment, a gesture, a form. That awareness doesn’t result in fragility, but rather in a kind of strength: a commitment to presence, to care, to the idea that what is made carries meaning beyond itself.
Hikari Mori on Whitewall’s Cover
“This building carries the traces of the many lives that have passed through it over time. We have
carefully preserved this layered history within its landscape,” photo by Shun Komiyama.
Our cover features three remarkable voices who embody this ethos in distinct ways. Chiharu Shiota transforms memory and emotion into immersive, thread-like environments that feel at once intimate and monumental. Tadao Ando continues to shape architecture as an experience of light, shadow, and stillness—spaces that invite reflection as much as movement. And Hikari Mori offers a deeply personal approach to living and making, one that bridges tradition and contemporary life through a quiet, evolving sensibility.
Elsewhere in the issue, we speak with artists and designers whose practices expand these conversations even further. Kenjiro Okazaki brings a philosophical lens to image-making and form, while Takuro Kuwata redefines ceramics with an energy that feels both ancient and radically new. In fashion, Chitose Abe of Sacai continues to challenge expectations, merging structure and fluidity into garments that reflect the complexity of modern life.
Whitewall’s Japan Issue for Spring 2026
Chiharu Shiota, “Dialogue From DNA,” 2004, Krakow, photo by Sunhi Mang.
What emerges throughout is not a single narrative, but a constellation of approaches—each rooted in a deep respect for process, material, and environment. Whether through architecture that frames the natural world, artworks that capture the passage of time, or objects that carry the imprint of the hand, these practices remind us that creativity is not separate from life—it is embedded within it.
As we move into the season, we hope this issue offers a moment to pause and engage with that perspective. To consider how we inhabit space, how we relate to objects, and how we carry forward the experiences that shape us.
It has been a true privilege to bring this issue to life. More soon.
Download the full issue HERE.
Purchase the print edition HERE.
