November 2026
The Musée d'Orsay sends 110-odd works to the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum on the 14th. A week later Tokyo Station Gallery opens Astrup's Norwegian lake through the seasons; the ginkgos outside cover autumn. Tate's Turner runs at the National Museum of Western Art into February. The Sumida Hokusai Museum's anniversary show and the Nezu's Bugaku costumes close on the 23rd.
Tokyo Metropolitan Art MuseumOpens 14 November
Around 110 works from the Musée d'Orsay across painting, sculpture, decorative arts and photography, with Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir among them. The Left Bank without the long-haul flight.
National Museum of Western ArtUntil 21 February
Turner's landscapes of the sublime hung in dialogue with contemporary art, organised with Tate. Friday and Saturday hours run to 8pm.
Tokyo Station GalleryOpens 21 November
About 130 works by the Norwegian painter Nikolai Astrup: oils and woodblock prints of the changing seasons around Jølster Lake.
The National Art Center, TokyoUntil 13 December
More than 50 works from the Louvre trace Renaissance art of the 15th and 16th centuries, including Leonardo's La Belle Ferronnière, shown in Japan for the first time.
Sumida Hokusai MuseumCloses 23 November
The museum's 10th-anniversary show centres on a seven-metre Sumida River scroll, back in Japan after a century, with rare and newly acquired Hokusai works. The real river is a short walk away, for comparison.
Nezu MuseumCloses 23 November
Bugaku court-dance costumes lent by temples and shrines including Amano-sha and Rinnoji, some shown for the first time in decades.
Mori Art MuseumUntil 28 March
Wave UFO, an 11-metre pod that turns a visitor's brainwaves into projected imagery, anchors Japan's first big Mariko Mori survey since 2002. Around it run her mid-1990s cyborg photographs and a glass totem wired to a neutrino detector.
Tokyo National MuseumUntil 6 December
The finale recreates the upper floor of Daitokuji's main gate, which the temple keeps shut, with Sen no Rikyu's statue on public view for the first time. Before it come 157 temple treasures, including the Kizaemon Ido tea bowl.
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
Around 110 works from the Musée d'Orsay spanning painting, sculpture, decorative arts and photography, including Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir.
Tokyo Metropolitan Art MuseumFree
Free 100th-anniversary archives exhibition retracing the museum's century through documents, photographs and the people behind it.
Tokyo Metropolitan Art MuseumFree
Free 100th-anniversary thematic show pairing sculpture, photography, text and painting by five artists exploring dialogue with the world.
Tokyo Station Gallery
Retrospective of about 130 works by the Norwegian painter Nikolai Astrup, including oil paintings and woodblock prints depicting seasonal landscapes near Jolster Lake, Norway.
Japan Folk Crafts Museum
The museum's annual juried competition and sale of new handicrafts by contemporary makers, spanning ceramics, textiles, woodwork, lacquer, glass, metal, bamboo, straw and paper.
Japan Folk Crafts MuseumPast
Marking the museum's 90th anniversary, around 50 Ryukyu bingata and woven textiles from the collection, many linked to the Sho royal family of Okinawa.
Edo-Tokyo Museum
Themed display of edo-kiriko and satsuma-kiriko cut glass vessels made for samurai and wealthy townspeople, blending Japanese and Western decorative styles.
Tokyo Station Gallery
Traces the classic Chinese novel Suikoden from Song-dynasty origins through its Edo-period popularity in Japan, with Ming and Qing works, Kuniyoshi's ukiyo-e, manga, and drama costumes.
Suntory Museum of Art
First major Tokyo showing in ~30 years of the Itsuo Art Museum's collection, from classical calligraphy fragments and tea utensils to paintings by Yosa Buson and Matsumura Go Shun.
Edo-Tokyo Museum
Renewal-commemorative special exhibition on brothers Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Hidenaga's role unifying Japan, with artifacts tied to Nobunaga, Ieyasu and Sen no Rikyu.
Tokyo National Museum
A tour of the Asian Gallery (Toyokan) exploring artworks through the lens of color, pigment science, and dyeing techniques across Asia.
21_21 DESIGN SIGHTFree
Gallery 3 show exploring body and clothing through a JAXA satellite image of Antarctica, which inspired A-POC ABLE ISSEY MIYAKE's jacquard-woven textiles for extreme environments including space.
Nezu Museum
Special exhibition of lavish Bugaku court-dance costumes from temples and shrines including Amano-sha and Rinnoji, some shown for the first time in decades.
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Commemorative exhibition marking the 50th edition of Japan's prestigious Kimura Ihei Photography Award; full details to be announced by the museum closer to opening.
Sumida Hokusai Museum
10th-anniversary special exhibition featuring a seven-metre Sumida River scroll back in Japan after a century, plus rare and newly acquired Hokusai works.
teamLab Borderless
A seasonal light installation evoking shifting terrain and landscape, on display at teamLab Borderless from September through November.
Tokyo National Museum
Treasures from Daitokuji, the Kyoto Zen temple founded in 1326, and its sub-temples, shown for its 700th anniversary and including the Kizaemon Ido tea bowl (National Treasure).
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
First Tokyo solo show in 35 years for sculptor Tada Minami (1924-2014), spanning sculpture, chandeliers and architectural "light sculptures" across her 70-year career.
Ōta Memorial Museum of Art
Two-term exhibition tracing ukiyo-e depictions of nighttime scenes, centred on Katsushika Ōi's famous "Night Scene in the Yoshiwara."
SOMPO Museum of Art
Some 90 works by the French Fauvist, tracing his career and celebrated waterside scenes and Pont-Neuf series, on loan from major French museums.
The National Art Center, Tokyo
Over 50 Louvre masterpieces trace 15th-16th century Renaissance art, including the Japan debut of Leonardo da Vinci's "Portrait of a Woman" (La Belle Ferronnière).
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Roughly 200 modern Taiwanese artworks, archival material and contemporaneous Japanese pieces, exploring shared modernity across art, film, literature and music.
Tokyo National Museum
Special exhibition marking the gift of the Uchiyama Susumu collection, showing complete sets of Hiroshige's Tokaido, Kiso Road, and Edo landscape print series in rotation.
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
Autumn-themed works from the gallery's Terada Collection, including paintings by Nambata Tatsuoki, Matsumoto Yuko and Uchida Aguri.
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
Tanaka Ai (b. 1992) shows large mineral-pigment paintings on paper, including the 2026 Acting in the Phenofact pair, in the gallery's emerging-artist series.
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
Group show of contemporary Japanese artists exploring the ecosystems that adapt to city life, from roadside weeds to organisms coexisting with concrete.
Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum
Over 60 dresses, printed textiles and production materials from the Finnish design house Marimekko, with a video on its Helsinki print factory and work by designer Akira Minagawa.
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Special exhibition of 500 works and materials by Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934), covering his "Yumeji style" images of women, paintings, prints and graphic design.
National Museum of Western Art
About 50 prints and drawings, plus three paintings, by 19 artists show how nineteenth-century Paris theatre, from Delacroix's Shakespeare to Toulouse-Lautrec's posters, entered art.
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
MOMAT Collection Focus show on Japanese artists who lived in Paris from the pre-war era through the postwar period, including Fujita Tsuguharu and Okamoto Taro.
National Museum of Western Art
Marking Japan's Shōwa centennial, this display traces conservation and restoration work at the NMWA from its 1959 founding through 1989.
21_21 DESIGN SIGHT
Contemporary architects and designers reinterpret Kamo no Chōmei's 13th-century "Hōjōki" and its 9m² hermitage, rethinking what it means to dwell. Directed by architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto.
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Six photographers and video artists from China and Japan in dialogue, exploring resonances born from the intersection of different cultures, times and personal experiences.
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Five contemporary artists using AI, CG and stop-motion reassemble existing memories, materials and technologies into new imagery, questioning how we perceive information today.
Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo
First major retrospective in Japan in 50 years of Italian landscape painter Antonio Fontanesi (1818-1882), who taught early Japanese Western-style painters in Tokyo.
Artizon Museum
The seventh Jam Session pairing sees contemporary artist Fujii Hikaru respond to 22 works from the Ishibashi Foundation Collection, inverting Plato's cave allegory to question the structure of truth.
Artizon Museum
Over 100 paintings from the Ishibashi Foundation Collection show how Japanese artists studying in Europe since the Meiji era, including Kuroda Seiki and Fujita Tsuguharu, engaged with Western art traditions.
Yayoi Kusama Museum
Kusama's work seen through the theme of light, from 1950s drawings to recent mirror rooms and metallic sculptures where light becomes the work itself.
The National Art Center, Tokyo
A retrospective on three pioneering shojo-manga artists, tracing their careers from the late 1960s to today through original drawings and archival material.
National Museum of Nature and Science
The museum's first special exhibition on sex as a theme, covering the diversity of sex in animals and plants through form, behaviour, sex determination and parenting.
National Museum of Western Art
A special exhibition placing J.M.W. Turner's work in dialogue with contemporary art, exploring the sublime in landscape and light.
National Museum of Nature and Science
A commemorative exhibition marking 150 years since the birth of bacteriologist Noguchi Hideyo, tracing his life's work and humanity's ongoing fight against infectious disease.
Mori Art Museum
Japan's first major Mariko Mori retrospective since 2002, spanning three decades from her 1990s Cyborg series to recent installations shaped by Buddhist philosophy and science.
Mori Art Museum
Showcase for Katayama Mari, first Grand Prize winner of the Mori Art Award, whose analogue photography, embroidery and needlework extend the boundaries of her own body.
Mori Art Museum
New ceramic sculptures by Santa Fe-based Brie Ruais, made after a residency at Shigaraki and research into Japanese clay and ceramic history, shaped through full-body movement.
Mori Art Museum
Three films by Thai artist Jakrawal Nilthamrong, centred on Rhizome (2022), where a man drifts on a raft above a flooded world. Screened 18:00-22:00, about 39 minutes in total.
Ghibli Museum, Mitaka
Recreation of illustrator Yuriko Yamawaki's studio, exploring her picture-book collaborations with Rieko Nakagawa and her influence on Hayao Miyazaki.
1 DecTokyo Photographic Art Museum
5 DecNezu Museum
12 DecŌta Memorial Museum of Art
12 DecSuntory Museum of Art
i16 DecSumida Hokusai Museum
6 Jan 2027Japan Folk Crafts Museum
i8 Jan 2027Tokyo National Museum
i9 Jan 2027SOMPO Museum of Art
i16 Jan 2027Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
i16 Jan 2027Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
i16 Jan 2027Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
i16 Jan 2027Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum
i19 Jan 2027Tokyo National Museum
26 Jan 2027Ōta Memorial Museum of Art
30 Jan 2027Nezu Museum
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.
