Tokyo Photographic Art MuseumEbisu Garden Place, Meguro
Okada Atsushi: Phantom Horse (Yururi Island 1950-2026)
Photographer Okada Atsushi's exhibition on Yururi Island, spanning 1950 to 2026, in the museum's basement-floor galleries.
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Preview: written before the show opened
When Okada Atsushi first got onto Yururi Island in late summer 2011, after about two and a half years of persuading Nemuro city, twelve horses lived there. By April 2026 there were two, and the show includes new, unpublished photographs of that last pair.
The island is uninhabited, about 8 km round, off the Nemuro Peninsula. Kelp fishers brought horses over from 1950, and when the people left, the horses stayed. The stallions were taken off in 2006, so the herd could not breed, and landing has been effectively banned since the early 1980s. You are looking at a place almost nobody is allowed to stand on. About 80 works fill the basement galleries, from his 2025 photobook The Horses of Yururi Island plus related video.
Tickets are ¥1,200, or ¥950 for university students and over-65s. It is closed Mondays, 28 December to 1 January and 12 January. The 6 December artist talk costs ¥2,200 and needs booking.
Editor's pick
Horses left behind by kelp fishers on Yururi Island, off Nemuro, dwindled from twelve to two after Okada Atsushi first landed there in 2011. About 80 photographs of an island almost nobody is allowed onto, including the last pair.
Look for
The last two horses
Look for the new photographs, unpublished until this show, of the only two horses still living on the island.
Good for
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
With kids
Elementary, junior-high and high-school students pay ¥400.
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Image credits
5
- Marimekko: Art of Printmaking — Beauty, Dream, LoveCourtesy of Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum
- The Beauty of Coolness: Edo-Tokyo Museum Glass Craft CollectionCourtesy of Edo-Tokyo Museum
- Suikoden: The Water Margin, Outlaws of the MarshCourtesy of Tokyo Station Gallery
- Tokyo Photographic Art MuseumYuya Tamai / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art MuseumKakidai, CC BY-SA 4.0