iYayoi Kusama MuseumBentencho, Shinjuku
The Light Spreads Out, and Glittering Things Start Appearing All Around Me
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.
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In the ground-floor lobby you meet LIFE, a cluster of tiled forms, the tallest over two metres. It opens the first show this museum has put on since Kusama died in August. The Japan Times noted that the route ends on the roof with Ladder to Heaven, though the curators say the programme was fixed months ago.
The title quotes Kusama, who described her childhood hallucinations as "radiance" and "scintillation", and the show follows light up five floors. The second floor holds 1950s pastels, an early Infinity Nets and glitter screenprints; the third, nets, dots and the big square canvases of the 2010s. You go up to the fourth floor for a single mirror room, then out onto the roof among the steel balls of Narcissus Garden.
Tickets are ¥1,100, online only, for 90-minute slots released on the 1st of each month for the month after next. Open Thursday to Sunday; closed 28 December to 6 January. There's no waiting area, so don't arrive early.
Editor's pick
Light runs up five floors: 1950s pastels where images emerge from darkness, paired gold and silver canvases, one mirror room alone on the fourth floor, then Narcissus Garden's steel balls on the roof. Tickets are online-only, in 90-minute slots.
Look for
LIFE (2023), in the lobby
Tiled sculptures from one to 2.25 metres tall, part of the show's metal-leaf mosaic work, greet you on the ground floor.
The gold and silver OBLITERATION OF STARS
Two 2.6-metre canvases from 2010, one gold and one silver, hang as a pair on the ground floor.
The 1950s drawings
Small pastel and gouache sheets such as A Flower #6 (1953), where, in the museum's words, images emerge from darkness suffused with light.
Longing for Infinite Heaven
The fourth floor holds just this one work: a 2020 box of mirrored glass and LEDs that multiplies its lights into apparently infinite space.
Ladder to Heaven
A nearly four-metre stainless-steel ladder from 2024 on the roof, incorporating mirrors and shown in Japan for the first time.
Good for
- First-Timers
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You only decide on the day: there are no door sales, only advance online tickets for timed slots.
With kids
Ages 6 to 18 pay ¥600 and under-6s are free.
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- The Light Spreads Out, and Glittering Things Start Appearing All Around MeCourtesy of Yayoi Kusama 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
- Masterpieces from the Itsuo Art Museum Collection: Buson, Go Shun, and the Art of TeaCourtesy of Suntory Museum of Art
- Yayoi Kusama MuseumBject / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0