“Roppongi Crossing 2025,” Capcom, Lisa Larson, Sol LeWitt, and moreーhere is a selection of the best exhibitions opening in Tokyo and beyond in December 2025.
Tokyo Art Beat presents a selection of the best exhibitions opening in December 2025. Bookmark the exhibitions on the TAB website or TAB app and never miss the openings and closings.
【Tokyo】Roppongi Crossing 2025: What Passes Is Time. We Are Eternal. (Mori Art Museum)
Held every three years, Roppongi Crossing offers a fixed-point observation of Japan’s contemporary art scene. The latest edition, titled What Passes Is Time. We Are Eternal., takes on the abstract yet universal theme of “time,” continuing the series’ tradition of presenting diverse artists under unique curatorial concepts.
Venue: Mori Art Museum
Schedule: December 3 – March 29, 2026
【Tokyo】Toward a Mausoleum of Perception: Mikami Seiko’s Interactive Art Installations (NTT ICC Inter Communication Center)
Seiko Mikami’s interactive installations, presented internationally since the 1990s, explored perception itself as the starting point for human connection with the world. Since her sudden passing in 2015, her work has been increasingly reappraised, including acquisitions by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. This exhibition presents several interactive installations from the late 1990s onward, alongside conservation and archiving initiatives by Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] and others.
Venue: NTT ICC Inter Communication Center
Schedule: December 13 – March 8, 2026
【Tokyo】Anti-Action: Artist Women’s Challenges and Responses in Postwar Japan (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
Drawing on gender studies perspectives from Izumi Nakajima’s Anti-Action (2019), this exhibition presents approximately 100 works by 14 artists, including Yayoi Kusama, Atsuko Tanaka, and Hideko Fukushima. Challenging male-centric art historical narratives, it illuminates new aspects of postwar Japanese art through the diverse expressions of women artists.
Venue: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Schedule: December 16 – February 8, 2026
【Tokyo】Capcom Creation— Moving hearts across the globe (Creative Museum Tokyo)
Capcom, the major game software company headquartered in Osaka, celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023. Since its founding in 1983, the company has produced globally popular titles including Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter. This exhibition focuses on the passion of game creators and the behind-the-scenes of game development, showcasing documents and original artwork created by developers’ hands, graphic works including posters and packaging, and interactive content.
Venue: Creative Museum Tokyo
Schedule: December 20 – February 22, 2026
【Tokyo】Koide Narashige: In Pursuit of Oil Painting for the Japanese (Fuchu Art Museum)
Keenly aware of the cultural differences between East and West, Narashige Koide pursued oil painting as a Japanese artist. Born into a merchant family in central Osaka, he adopted a Western lifestyle after traveling abroad, embodying the modern urban culture of the Taisho and early Showa periods. This retrospective, the first in 25 years, brings together his major works.
Venue: Fuchu Art Museum
Schedule: December 20 – March 1, 2026
【Tokyo】Sol LeWitt: Open Structure (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
Sol LeWitt transformed art in the late 1960s by prioritizing ideas and creative processes over the artwork itself. This first solo exhibition at the Japanese public museum traces LeWitt’s trajectory through wall drawings, three-dimensional and two-dimensional works, and artist’s books—a body of work that has continually prompted reconsideration of existing frameworks.
Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Schedule: December 25 – April 2, 2026
【Tokyo】Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2024-2026 Exhibition “Wetland” (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
The Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (TCAA) is a contemporary art prize for mid-career artists, organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) since 2018. Recipients receive multi-year support, including overseas activities, culminating in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. This exhibition features the fifth recipients, Tetsuya Umeda and Haji Oh, who have recently incorporated water-related themes such as “sea routes” and “waterways” into their work.
Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Schedule: December 25 – March 29, 2026
【Tokyo】Lisa Larson’s Way (Play!Museum)
Swedish ceramicist Lisa Larson is beloved across generations in Japan for her charming animal-motif pottery. This exhibition introduces the creative world of Larson, who passed away in 2024 at age 92, through displays organized around “seeing, learning, and making.” Visitors can view her sketches, works, and tools she used in Sweden, while videos introduce the craftspeople involved in production.
Venue: Play!Museum
Schedule: December 27 – February 23, 2026
【Aomori】Sugito Hiroshi: Flyleaf and Liner (Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art)
Hiroshi Sugito has been exhibiting internationally since the 1990s, rhythmically composing familiar motifs—small houses, boats, fruit, trees, and raindrops—alongside lines and geometric forms in fresh colors. This exhibition focuses on “margins”: paper and wood strips attached as borders framing the canvas’s reverse, “flyleaves” appearing when opening a book’s cover, and clothing “liners”—things in places we don’t immediately notice.
Venue: Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art
Schedule: December 5 – May 17, 2026
【Aomori】Kineta Kunimatsu: Breathing in Ripples (Towada Art Center)
First museum solo exhibition for sculptor Kineta Kunimatsu, who creates works through encounters with trees that have formed unique shapes over long years. Recently, he has presented sculptures, paintings, and installations exploring contours found in landscapes—horizons, mountain ranges, and caves. The exhibition features representative works alongside new pieces born from encounters with Towada’s nature.
Venue: Towada Art Center
Schedule: December 13 – May 10, 2026
【Kanagawa】Yokohama Museum of Art Reopening Inaugural Exhibition “Art Between Japan and Korea Since 1945” (Yokohama Museum of Art)
Japan and Korea, neighbors bound by geographical proximity and cultural affinity, have shared a long and complex history. This exhibition seeks to rediscover their mutual relationship, shaped by the complex and rich histories of both countries, through artworks created since 1945.
Venue: Yokohama Museum of Art
Schedule: December 6 – March 22, 2026
【Kanagawa】Spring Rising (Pola Museum of Art)
Centered on “regeneration” symbolized by spring, this exhibition asks how we might reconnect with nature, the memory of place, and inner strength. For the first time, Pola Museum of Art focuses on “Hakone” itself as a subject, introducing expressions from the Edo period to the present, starting from Ukiyo-e prints and Important Cultural Properties. Alongside new works by Shinji Ohmaki, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Machiko Ogawa, the exhibition features Western modern paintings from the collection, including works by Monet, Van Gogh, and Rousseau.
Venue: Pola Museum of Art
Schedule: December 13 – May 31, 2026
【Ishikawa】Bringing Us Together: Art for the Noto Peninsula (21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa)
This exhibition brings together works from museums across Tokyo, including the Tokyo National Museum. Participating institutions selected works with hopes for recovery, aiming to comfort and encourage the people of the Noto Peninsula affected by the 2024 earthquake. The exhibition is held across three venues, including Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art (November 15 – December 21) and the National Crafts Museum (December 9 – March 1, 2026).
Venue: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa
Schedule: December 13 – March 1, 2026
【Kyoto】#WhereDoWeStand?: Art in Our Time (The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto)
Artists can be seen as beings who, through art, bring awareness to everyday problems and fundamental truths about the world. Focusing on contemporary art since the 1990s, when globalization expanded opportunities for Japanese artists to present work abroad, this exhibition introduces domestic artists’ practices based on multiple themes drawn from the museum’s collection.
Venue: The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
Schedule: December 20 – March 8, 2025
【Osaka】Surrealism: Expanding from the Visual Arts to Advertising, Fashion, and Interior Design (Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka)
Surrealism profoundly influenced modern art and also extended into living spaces, including advertising, fashion, and interior design. This exhibition deconstructs the movement that expanded with overwhelming presence into the visual arts and society at large, examining it through the lens of expressive media, and reconstructs a new image of Surrealism.
Venue: Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka
Schedule: December 13 – March 8, 2026
【Kagawa】Janet Cardiff “The Forty Part Motet” (Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art)
This exhibition features Janet Cardiff’s sound installation The Forty Part Motet, which plays the voices of a choir individually through 40 speakers arranged in an ellipse. Since its debut in 2001, this signature work has been exhibited at approximately 60 locations worldwide. Following venues, including Hara Museum ARC, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, this is the final opportunity to experience the work in Japan. Also worth checking is the concurrent exhibition Genichiro Inokuma: Arrangements of Dreams.
Venue: Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art
Schedule: December 13 – February 15, 2026
【Hiroshima】The Secret of White in Paintings (Hiroshima Museum of Art)
In Claude Monet’s snow scenes, various colors, including light blue, purple, and pink, are used, yet the overall impression of “white snow” remains intact. While often overlooked compared to chromatic colors or black, white is actually an essential element in painting—both as motif and pigment. Artists across time and cultures have expressed this color through available materials and techniques, each with their own sensibility. This exhibition explores the role of “white” in painting from various perspectives.
Venue: Hiroshima Museum of Art
Schedule: December 13 – March 22, 2026
【Okinawa】A New Current of Art Flows from the Island of Taketomi Town (Urauchi Community Center)
A new art festival launches across the Yaeyama Islands—Japan’s southernmost point and gateway to Asia. Set across nine inhabited islands in the Yaeyama archipelago, the festival aims to “excavate” history, culture, and ways of life rooted in the land, weaving the region’s cultural richness into the future. Rather than a conventional exhibition, it emphasizes encounters and collaborations between islanders and artists.
Venue: Urauchi Community Center and other locations
Schedule: December 5 – December 14
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