Japan moves at different speeds at once. This tension has always shaped its creative life.
History and tradition sit closely with modernity. Not as contrast, but as layers. New projects continue to enter old contexts – cities, buildings, landscapes that carry long memories. What is exciting today is how naturally these layers coexist. Architecture, art, fashion, craft, and music are finding ways to insert new ideas into places that are already dense with meaning.
“Japan moves at different speeds at once. This tension has always shaped its creative life,”
—Shohei Shigematsu
Time also behaves differently here. There is patience. Things take years, sometimes decades, to mature. Craft depends on repetition and attention to the smallest detail. Yet the cities move fast. Information moves even faster. Images, objects, and ideas circulate through an environment that can feel almost overstimulating. Between slowness and speed, a distinct energy forms.
Japan Through the Lens of Shohei Shigematsu
Toranomon Hills Station Tower, Tokyo, Japan, photo by Jason O’Rear.
This rhythm has also been shaped by Japan’s recent economic history. Decades of stagnation slowed development and created a certain distance from the rapid globalization transforming other economies. Within this context, Japan’s cultural originality continued to develop at its own pace, gradually becoming even more distinct.
Today, Japan is also experiencing a renewed moment of global attention. Not only in its major cities, but across the country. Smaller cities, coastal regions, and rural landscapes are becoming sites of experimentation. Artists, architects, designers, curators and gallerists from both local and global communities are engaging with these places. The geography of creativity is expanding.
A New Culture Emerges in Japan
Louis Vuitton: Visionary Journeys – Osaka, Atrium Trunkscape, Nakanoshima, Museum of Art, Japan, photo by Jeremie Souteyrat.
Courtesy of Harajuku Quest, photo by Forward Stroke Inc, courtesy of OMA.
New ideas arrive through many channels. International galleries are establishing a stronger presence. Fashion brands continue to act as cultural platforms. At the same time, youth culture is creating its own ecosystems – small collectives, independent spaces, and niche scenes that operate with a different rhythm.
Japan can sometimes take itself very seriously. But something is shifting. A cultural identity is slowly forming that feels less defined by postwar models of modernity and more by a confidence in its own contradictions.
This issue highlights spaces, practices, and ideas born from these intersections. Creative spheres colliding. Generations overlapping. Local and global communities meeting in unexpected ways.
It is only a fragment of what is happening, but I hope these pages offer readers a glimpse into Japan’s evolving cultural fabric, and encourage a closer look at the many landscapes, people, and ideas shaping it today.
—Shohei Shigematsu
PARTNER OF OMA
Purchase the print edition HERE.
