Art in Japan>Galleries, Museums & Organizations>Roppongi Rising

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Roppongi Rising

by John McGee

It’s Friday night in central Tokyo’s Roppongi district, and Tsutomu Ikeuchi is spinning ‘80s hits at the bar Traumaris—“Roxanne,” “Beat It” and, yes, “Mr. Roboto.” About a dozen people crowd the narrow concrete shoebox of a place, drinking, chatting and dancing. 

Traumaris, a hip art bar in the Complex 
gallery building in Roppongi, Tokyo
(All photos: John McGee)

This is a typical scene in Roppongi, one of Tokyo’s largest entertainment districts. Bars here are a yen a dozen—small izakaya (pubs), cafes and hostess bars honeycomb most of the neighborhood’s decrepit medium-rise buildings. 

What sets Traumaris apart is not its boudoir-meets-bomb-shelter décor or the music, but its clientele. Instead of the salariman, English teachers and furloughed sailors who are mainstays of this international district, there are artists, curators, collectors and local gallerists (DJ Ikeuchi is one, along with Hiromi Yoshii, part owner of the bar). Also present are a prominent art writer and even a museum director (David Elliott, head of the new Mori Art Museum, who is a regular). 

Traumaris is Tokyo’s de facto Deux Magots, the social hub of what is becoming the new geographical center of the city’s contemporary art scene. In the past 18 months, Complex—the building housing Traumaris—and the much-heralded Mori Art Museum (MAM) have opened in central Roppongi, transforming the district into a vibrant cultural destination. Complex also features five contemporary art galleries, an artist’s studio, an architecture firm and the office of Yoshiko Isshiki, a high-profile manager whose clients include the photographers Yasumasa Morimura and Nobuyoshi Araki. 

Until recently, the art form most Roppongi visitors expected to see was exotic dance. “High Touch Town”—its official nickname, cast in concrete on a highway overpass above the main drag like a perverse welcome sign—is known for cheap bars and sleaze. 

Roppongi Hills with the Fumihiko Maki-
designed Asahi TV building and Tatsuo
Miyajima installation in foreground, Mori
Tower in background

But Roppongi also sits on a hill in the middle of the city, surrounded by some of Tokyo’s most desirable business and residential property. Within walking distance are the prime minister’s residence, numerous embassies, major international financial institutions, the Japan Foundation, tony restaurants and nightclubs, fine antique galleries and very high-end housing. Two new subway lines stop here and there’s new construction everywhere. 

Roppongi’s geographic charms have not been lost on Minoru Mori, the Donald Trump of Tokyo. Over 17 years, Mori and his company, Mori Building Co., planned and built Roppongi Hills, a $2.3 billion urban redevelopment project that opened in April 2003. The glitzy hill town drips with brand names: There’s a Grand Hyatt Hotel, Versace and Escada boutiques, a branch of Todd English’s “Olives” restaurant, a Virgin cineplex, and public art by Louise Bourgeois and Cai Guo-Qiang, among others. Rising from the center of Roppongi Hills is the cylindrical Mori Tower, a 53-story steel and glass office building capped by MAM, the world’s highest museum. 

MAM has been phenomenally popular since it opened last October. The inaugural exhibition, a vast art survey exploring the theme of Happiness, pulled in 750,000 visitors over its three-month run. The museum’s nearly 32,000 square feet of exhibition space, progressive outlook and initial operating funds of nearly $10 million have helped it stand out from the dozen or so other Tokyo-area museums showing modern and contemporary art. Savvy marketing goes a long way too: MAM shares the 52nd floor with a viewing deck offering panoramic views of the city, and tickets to one include admission to the other. 

Entrance hall of Mori Art Museum and the exhibition "Happiness: A Survival
Guide for Art and Life" with Yasumasa Morimura's A Magnanimous Prayer 
(two of three), 2003, inkjet print on polythene sheet and Jeong So-Youn's 
Stairway to Heaven, 2000, white feathers

A few years ago, Tokyo’s gallery scene was anemic. The best galleries were spread far apart, often in inconvenient locations. Being a collector or fan of new art required otaku (nerd)-level commitment. One of the few places that offered a cluster of galleries was the Shokuryo Building, an atmospheric former rice market that became an important breeding ground for dealers showing cutting-edge art. But the building was razed in 2002 to make way for high-rise condominiums, displacing prominent dealers like Tomio Koyama—who represents international stars Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara—and Taro Nasu. 

As the Shokuryo dealers searched for new spaces, other galleries around the city began to rethink their geographical strategy. “They were so isolated—they wanted to create an art scene,” says Yukie Kamiya, a former independent curator based in Yokohama and now associate curator at the New Museum in New York. “They needed to discover the new Chelsea in Tokyo.” 

Conveniently, Mori Building owned a place in Roppongi that fit the bill: a pair of conjoined five-story buildings that was then nearly empty. It was old and had low ceilings run through with rough-concrete beams, but the lease was affordable and the location was right—virtually across the street from Roppongi Hills. Freshly whitewashed and christened “Complex,” the gallery and mixed-use building opened in April 2003. 

Complex gallery building in Roppongi, Tokyo

Joining Traumaris on the ground floor are Ota Fine Arts and Hiromi Yoshii Gallery. Ota is a nine-year-old gallery showing artists both young and established, such as Yayoi Kusama and Tsuyoshi Ozawa, both subjects of recent MAM solo shows. Kusama-, a Japanese contemporary art pioneer, began exhibiting her phallus sculptures and net and polka dot paintings in the 1960s. Ozawa, creator of “Museum of Soy Sauce Art” and other ironic takes on Japanese culture, is one of the most influential Tokyo-based artists to emerge in the 1990s. Hiromi Yoshii may be the only first-time gallerist in the building, but he’s enlivened the scene by showing hot emerging Japanese artists such as Tabaimo (whose hand-drawn animations were the hit of the 2001 Yokohama Triennale) and introducing hip overseas artists such as Assume Vivid Astro Focus (who made a psychedelic installation at this year’s Whitney Biennial).

Upstairs are Roentgenwerke, Taro Nasu Gallery and Gallery Min-Min. Ikeuchi’s gallery has changed names (always keeping “roentgen”—German for x-ray—in the title) and venues (first the city’s largest gallery—a warehouse; then the smallest—a closet-sized office), but continues showing mostly technology-related or conceptual art. Robot-builder Kenji Yanobe was one of his early artists and British conceptualist Simon Patterson recently had back-to-back exhibitions of his text-based work there. Six-year-old Taro Nasu Gallery primarily shows landscape-based photography and painting by international and Japanese artists such as Taiji Matsue (black-and-white photos of nature and cities from a bird’s-eye perspective) and Maiko Haruki (large minimalist photos of water and light). Three-year-old Gallery Min-Min exhibits contemporary painting from Japan, the US and Europe behind its pink door. (Not all the errant galleries ended up in Roppongi, see sidebar.) 

Complex and MAM depart from Tokyo’s traditional gallery and museum culture and point to a new, more western model. Complex gallerists—all in their 30s and 40s—sacrificed the larger spaces of outlying areas and the safety of Ginza or Aoyama (traditionally Tokyo’s art districts, but expensive in rent and conservative in taste) in favor of a rambunctious central location they could help turn into a cultural destination. 

Tabaimo and Mariko Mori show at Hiromi Yoshii Gallery in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan

This self-confidence coincides with the development of a collector base over the past decade. Numerous gallerists—inside Complex and out—report a growing domestic interest in contemporary art, especially among men in their 30s who see art collecting as a lifestyle choice rather than an investment. Their forebears during the ’80s-era Bubble economy were typically CEOs who collected Renoirs and Van Goghs for corporate prestige rather than love. Now, as Kamiya puts it, “people have discovered the pleasure of art.” 

MAM has been decried as corporate gilding by some, but its approach remains decidedly unconventional for Japan. It is one of the few museums here without a bureaucrat or businessman as director. In fact MAM’s chief, Elliott, is the first non-Japanese museum director in the country. Additionally, the museum’s strong curatorial vision, well-funded exhibitions and community outreach programs set a new standard for Tokyo institutions. But Kamiya notes with a laugh a similarity between Roppongi Hills and an old marketing trick. Many Japanese department stores once had a museum on the top floor to create what Kamiya calls “the shower effect.” “If customers go to the top floor, they can see all floors” as they descend, says Kamiya. “The top floor is the most luxurious, the most prestigious thing is art, so they put it on top.” 

The Complex galleries expected a deluge of visitors to flood from the shiny steel and red sandstone of Roppongi Hills and MAM into the musty concrete medina they inhabit. “With the convenience of the location, we hoped that people could casually step into the galleries after shopping, seeing a film, eating a meal or if they were just walking by,” says Yoshii. Though some Complex gallerists are less emphatic, Yoshii says, “It’s been absolutely successful.”

As an art destination, Roppongi is a work in progress. Roppongi Hills was the splashiest development in many years, but it’s not the last. On the northern edge of the district, Mitsui Fudosan is building a mixed-use development on former Japanese Defense Agency land. It will feature a Ritz-Carlton Hotel (opening in 2008) on top of an office tower, and Suntory Museum, a distillery-owned space showing traditional Japanese arts, is expected to move there. Also, the National Art Center, Tokyo, a kunsthalle slated to open in 2006, is currently under construction a few blocks west of Roppongi Hills. (This, however, has many detractors. Kamiya calls it “another disaster” because of its redundancy and expense—over $500 million—both typical of government-initiated museum projects.) 

The Complex dealers have noticed increased traffic in one important group. “Collectors prefer Roppongi,” says Taro Nasu. “They come more frequently because Roppongi is convenient and especially because of the bar.” As Tokyo’s first real art hangout, Traumaris (the name combines tora, uma and risu, Japanese for “tiger,” “horse” and “squirrel”) is popular for a drink after a gallery opening or nijikai (post-opening dinner), and for regular art and music events. 

Traumaris symbolizes the energy and optimism radiating from the cooperative spirit at the center of Tokyo’s most important new art destination. “Tenants of the Complex Building believe that Roppongi can gradually become a cultural power, that art can make changes to the town,” says Yoshii. On a scale large and small, in the people and the institutions, that seems to be coming true. In exchange for this cultural redemption, Roppongi’s location and vitality has given Tokyo’s contemporary art scene something it has long lacked: a heart with a strong, steady beat.

This article on the Roppongi art scene was originally published in Art+Auction magazine in 2004.

©2006 John McGee

©2006-2008 John McGee. All Rights Reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission.