30 Most Powerful Japanese Sculptures You Should Know

by Jes Kalled | ART

© Nagato Iwasaki, Torso, Wooden Sculpture

Extraordinary sculpture art requires two things: unbridled imagination and superlative skill. It should be no surprise then that some of the most astonishing contemporary sculpture is being made in Japan, which has no shortage of either!

Perhaps the greatest advantage Japanese sculpture artists have over their international counterparts is the rich history of craft mastery that they can draw on. Whether working in metal, wood, bamboo, or ceramics, today’s innovators can apply centuries old techniques to the most intriguing new ideas.

Here we have selected 30 Japanese sculptors new and old, working in all manner of media, resulting in some incredible art sculptures that you won’t be able to forget!

1. Chiharu Shiota

© Peter Mallet, Chiharu Shiota Installation

Renowned for her installations and performances that exhibit around the world, Berlin-based artist Chiharu Shiota targets the intangible. Her largest exhibition, entitled The Soul Trembles, takes viewers on a journey to themselves; their innermost identities that aren’t always accessible or visible to us on the surface. Shiota is a multimedia artist, well known for her use of thread, sculpted to span the length of a room. In contrast, Shiota also uses miniscule, everyday objects that get tangled in the thread of her massive pieces. “String for me is like drawing in the air...it’s like 3-dimensional drawing.” She said in an interview at The Art Gallery of South Australia.

2. Tatsuo Miyajima

The contemporary artist, Tatsuo Miyajima, uses modern technology to create sculptures and immersive installations. Using LEDs, the sculptor creates pieces that primarily deal with the concept of time and endlessness. His lights and numbers in projects such as Sea of Time, Clock for 300 years, and Mega-Death play with the units of time, measurement, and their relationship to human life. A memorial to the Holocaust, the blinking blue lights of Mega-Death personify energy, submerging viewers into temporary darkness only to light up once more. Life, death, then life again.

3. Mariko Mori

Future self. What does that look like? Multi-disciplinary artist, Mariko Mori investigates identity, often blending and reimagining her own with science fiction-like tendencies and technology. The artist is searching for transcendence, and uses her mediums in an attempt to achieve it. One of her more recent sculptures, Divine Stone VI, presents a crystalized rock made with dichroic coating. The spectrum of color and light that is captured in the piece seems to emulate its surroundings. Divine Stone VI is a symbol of the hybridity between the aesthetic of iwakura (the study of ancient spiritual rocks) with a modern touch or twist. You can also read more about Mori in 25 Japanese Women Artists You Really Should Know!

4. Kishio Suga

Kishio Suga is known for his sculptures and installations that have a spatial conscience. Using materials such as rock, concrete, and sand, the sculptor’s process is a “reconceptualization,” or rather, he plays with the “unfamiliar phrasing” of familiar materials and things. Well known for his site-specific work, the artist is historically associated with the movement of Mono ha, the School of Things, in which Suga continuously investigates “situation” and its relationship to “things,” the elements adorning or accompanying it. In this piece, Emerging Space Amidst Branches, 1978/2013, the artist employs techniques similar to his other work, Continuous Existence, 1977. Both sculpture installations, as with all of his pieces, adhere to his core principle concepts of space and material, and yet continuously plays with the site as the element of variability.

5. Takamura Koun

Takamura Koun modernized woodcarving in the late 1800s. A professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, he dedicated his practice to the realistic, modern recreation of buddhist images. A transitional practice that he engineered solo. One of the most famous sculptures he created was The Aged Monkey or Roen. The sculptor was unique in that he insisted on using wood as a material for sculpting, despite the fact that ivory was favored at the time.

6. Toshikatsu Endo

Water. Wood. Soil. Fire. Using these elements, sculptor Toshikatsu Endo often creates giant structures which he usually burns. His implementation of circular shapes point to his interest in the eternal. The use of fire points to ancient traditions. Endo plays with these universal materials, and images on an incredibly large and visible scale. In a letter from the artist on his exhibition in Flakstad, Norway, he says, “I really want to move this place.” He explains in conceptual depth that he does not want to “[add] something new to this land,” and yet he, as a sculptor, fears his “powerlessness” and “negation.” Thus, in his work, Endo seeks to move and create by being one with the community and space and yet influencing it all the same.

7. Megumi Igarashi

Artist Megumi Igarashi, with her pseudonym Rokudennashiko (good for nothing girl) is known as the “vagina artist.” Using 3D scanning technology, the artist copies her own vagina to engineer sculptures such as Vagina Boat, a self-designed kayak, and Deco-man, which are plaster figurines. In 2014, and not long after her first solo exhibition, local authorities came to her house and arrested her on the grounds of her art being “obscene.” In an interview with the Japan Times, she said ,“It’s wrong for the government to judge what is art and what is not.” The reaction towards Igarashi’s art has inspired her to focus on it even more intently, highlighting the double standard in society where “vagina” is taboo, and “penis” is not.

8. Tomio Miki

Tomio Miki was primarily focused on the subject of one body part: the ear. Miki described an experience on a train that likely contributed to his fascination. “...for no reason, I suddenly felt myself surrounded by hundreds of ears trying to assault me.” The sculptures themselves are usually individually portrayed. Characterized as separate from the body, but at times paired with objects such as lights, or spoons. At times the individual pieces are displayed in a series of rows or repetitions. This, perhaps, is the defining factor in categorizing Miki as an one of the “Obsessional Artists” of the 1960s.

9. Yoshitatsu Yanagihara

Known for his shows in Japan, Italy, and Brazil, sculptor Yoshitatsu Yanagihara, was born in 1910 and lived until 2004. Originally from Kobe, Yanagihara began his career as a painter, but made the switch to sculpture after witnessing photographs of Auguste Rodin’s and Antoine Bourdelle’s work. As a sculptor, Yanagirhara focused most of his attention on nature, creating several statues of crows, and pigeons, of which he hoped people would be more kind to. He is also known for his statues of women, where he focused on posture, and explored how body parts move; an exercise in trying to understand the laws of nature.

10. Jun Kaneko

". . . I think the most successful piece has the ability to pull the viewer right into it, to such an extent so there is no perceptible space between the viewer and the viewed object." Jun Kaneko, born in Nagoya, and now living in Omaha, Nebraska, is a ceramic sculptor that focuses on scale. Kaneko works particularly with round, spheric shapes that are not so dissimilar to Japanese dango. The surface of his monumentally sized pieces (some as tall as 13 feet) are painted onto as if a canvas, making his work a combination of sculpture and painting. He writes that the surface decoration is incredibly important to his process. “I almost always have a need to paint on it.”

11. Minoru Niizuma

Working primarily with marble, granite, and at times even volcanic rock, Minoru Niizuma is sometimes labeled minimalistic, and abstract. His work is organic and geometric, often pulling inspiration from Japanese Folk Art and European minimalist aesthetics. His focus on nature is both material and symbolic, especially in Niizuma’s exploration of texture and pattern. Moss covered basses, and rough linear textures show his dedication to blend with it—to be a part of it—and yet stand out from it simultaneously. His work exemplifies the relationship and interplay between art and nature, nature and art.

12. Fujiko Nakaya

Perhaps the first, if not only artist to use fog as a medium for sculpture. Fujiko Nakaya collaborates with water, site-specific space, and time in a conceptual display of natural phenomena and technology. Her interest lies within things that naturally decompose, or change. In her words, “repeatedly form, and dissolve themselves.” The fog sculptures allow an audience to directly interact with the environment, another key point in Nakaya’s immersive, and ever-changing pieces. With physicist Thomas Mee, Nakaya created a system to pressurize water into droplets that are 20 microns wide, allowing for the spread of fog across a space. Nakaya has worked with choreographer and dancer Trisha Brown, graphic designer Robert Rauschenberg, among other artists in a collaborative dispersive effort.

13. Chiho Aoshima

Chiho Aoshima’s claim to fame is her adept skill in Adobe Illustrator. However, she has since then grown to include sculpture beneath her wing of multidisciplinary talent. Aoshima portrays Japanese yokai or spirits/ghosts. The imagery she depicts sustains a dialogue she seems to be having on a different dimension altogether. Otherworldly, and dreamlike, her hand-painted ceramic subjects lie within a valley that’s between cheerful and dark, a level she doesn’t hesitate to explore with detail and precision.

14. Ryo Arai

Japanese ancient folklore is a mystical world of monsters, ghosts and goblins. Sculpture artist Ryo Arai reveals its dark secrets with his surprisingly lifelike characters.

This seductive spider woman is named Jorogumo, a type of ghost or goblin that was a well-known figure in Edo fables. Legend has it that this creature would first appear as a beautiful woman to entice her victim by playing biwa, a Japanese flute, and would then bind him in a spider web to be her next feast.

This stunning representation is part of the Yokai Hariko series, where Arai traces monstrous figures from the Edo period. He combines woodblock-engraving techniques with traditional netsuke carving – a specialized workmanship for miniature sculptures first developed in the 17th century.

Arai has a great blog in Japanese detailing many of his mythological creations at h-box.info/arairyo_site.

15. Takashi Wakamiya

© Takashi Wakamiya, Wood and Lacquer, Hermit Crab

Only in Japan could a hermit crab find such luxurious accommodation!

Of course, this crab is not a living creature, but is ingeniously constructed from wood. This beautifully naturalistic sculpture was created for an exhibition showcasing the how different craft traditions can be fused together.

The elegant shell is pieced together from a pair of lacquer bowls. An octopus design is raised from the surface of the bowls using a technique called takamaki-e, where layers of lacquer, charcoal and metal powder are built up to form a three-dimensional motif on the otherwise smooth lacquer.

Lacquer artist Takashi Wakamiya leads a team of artisans, Hikoju Makie, who work together employing traditional Japanese craft techniques to produce exquisitely desirable objects such as this one. Find out more at wakamiya-takashi.com.

16. Nagato Iwasaki

At first glance, this looks like a sculpture expertly carved from a wooden block, but look closer.

In fact, Nagato Iwasaki’s perfectly proportional creations are assembled from pieces of driftwood that the artist finds on the beach near his studio in Yamanashi.

The weather-worn curves of the wood are carefully placed to reflect the curves of the human form. Iwasaki achieves this without any recourse to nails or glue – all the pieces are held together by wooden stakes.

For more fascinating sculptures from Iwasaki, visit his website at nagato-iwasaki.com.

17. Masao Ueno

The artistry of Masao Ueno’s abstract bamboo sculptures is made possible only by a weaving together of many skills: botanical, technological and artistic!

Ueno harvests the bamboo trunks by hand at the end of the year, then coats them in oil and dries them outside for two months. With the arrival of spring, it is time for the arduous process of striping the outer surface, then slicing the pole into strips of perfectly equal size and thickness.

As a former architect, Ueno is able to combine these ancient techniques with state-of-the-art computer-aided design to play with the possibilities of form and structure. But when it comes to the weaving of the final creation, Ueno must rely on his own nimble fingers and agile imagination.

Find out more about Ueno’s bamboo craft at bamboouenomasao.com.

18. Satoshi Mizushiro

© Satoshi Mizushiro, Metal Flying Fish Sculpture

Metal seems as malleable as clay in the hands of sculpture artist Satoshi Mizushiro.

Combining skillfully shaped metals bars with subtle gradations of colour, Mizushiro coaxes out gloriously lifelike models of animals and plants. This smoothly curved flying fish looks ready to leap back into the ocean at any minute.

See more of Mizushiro’s creations at satoshimizushiro.com.

19. Junko Mori

This silver wreath by Wales-based artist Junko Mori is an example of stunning craftsmanship, where unyielding metal is cast as tender spring petals.

This one-of-kind piece entitled 'Silver Poetry; Spring Fever Ring' is an appropriate introduction to Mori’s instinctive making process: ‘No piece is individually planned but becomes fully formed within the making and thinking process. Repeating little accidents, like a mutation of cells, the final accumulation of units emerges within this process of evolution,’ says Mori.

Similar to Rakuware by a tea master craftsman, Mori’s work embodies that rare quality where accidents are celebrated for their uncontrollable beauty.

See more of Mori’s exquisite work visit junkomori.com.

20. Motohiko Odani’s Kinetic Sculpture is Set in Motion

Motohiko Odani is one of those artists who are propelling Japanese sculpture into the future. His work expresses the unlimited potential of sculpture: s a 3D medium, it does not have to be static and observed, it can be dynamic and interactive.

Odani always brings this out in his sculpture. This wooden ruffle dress is a great example as it appears to spin against the waves, even when it is standing still. The blurring of sculpture, art, fashion and photography is the inspirational result of Odani’s singular vision.

Enjoy more of Odani’s work at phantom-limb.com.

21. Satoshi Yabuuchi

© Satoshi Yabuuchi, Sakko Wooden Sculpture

Art sculptor Satoshi Yabuuchi brings snapshots of history to life with this impeccable study of Edo fashion.
This expressive wood sculpture depicts a particular Edo era (1603-1868) hairstyle and decoration, called Sakko that was popularized by young married women of western Japan. It is still styled today by Kyoto’s maiko when they graduate to geiko (geisha).

Check out Y’s Gallery for more Yabuuchi’s stunning creations.

22. Izuru Yamamoto

© Izuru Yamamoto, Tsumiage Kaki, Clay Flower Vase — © Izuru Yamamoto, Tsumiage Kaki, Clay Flower Vase

Look closely at this skilfully harmonious clay sculpture. Plates of clay are layered together to create the distinct architectural composition. This remarkable flower vase highlights sculptor Izuru Yamamoto’s pursuit of the immense capability of clay.

Hand-crafted with clay from Bourgogne, France for its particular properties, Yamamoto spent years developing this cutting-edge pottery technique named Tsumiage, which refers to the towering layered craftsmanship. He is recognized as a Living National Treasure for his life-long work in potter and sculpture.

You can learn more about master potter Yamamoto on his official website. You can also discover some other incredible ceramic artists here.

23. Tomohiro Inaba

© Tomohiro Inaba, Metal Sculpture — © Tomohiro Inaba, Metal Sculpture

When you look this extraordinary metal sculpture, do you see the deer forming or disappearing?

Up-and-coming sculptor Tomohiro Inaba utilises solid steel wires to create this inspired pencilled scribble effect. All of his sculptures begin with objects anatomically whole, which then undergo this striking metamorphosis where each single wire adopts a life of its own!

Explore Inaba’s highly imaginative sculptures at tomohiro-inaba.com.

24. Yuichi Ikehata

© Yuichi Ikehata, Digital Image — © Yuichi Ikehata, Digital Image

Pushing the boundaries of sculpture from the physical form to the super-flat of the digital.

Artist Yuichi Ikehata begins his unconventional sculpture with a wire frame, accentuated with clay and paper. The model is then “sculpted” digitally to bring these fantastical beings to life.

Enjoy more of Ikehata’s cutting-edge photography at works.kakuunohito.com.

25. Chie Hitotsuyama

© Chie Hitotsuyama, Monkey Sculpture — © Chie Hitotsuyama, Monkey Sculpture

Can you guess what these amazingly life-like monkey sculptures are made from?

Artist Chie Hitotsuyama uses rolled up strips of newspaper to recreate these charming animal sculptures. In fact, Hitotsuyama has created a whole menagerie of sculptures in this way, and it is absolutely incredible the level of detail she is able to achieve!

Check out her site at hitotsuyamastudio.com to see more. You can also check out these 5 Greatest Kirie Japanese Paper-Cutting Artists, and maybe even learn a little Origami yourself!

26. Hajime Sorayama

© Hajime Sorayama, Android — © Hajime Sorayama, Android

In years to come, robots and their makers will recall the innovative work of Hajime Sorayama.

Sorayama has worked pioneering android sculpture and illustration for over forty years. Conceptual metal sculpture such as this one, have helped to revolutionize public attitudes to robotics. Through his art, robots can be seen as arresting, fun, and a positive direction for future technological development.

This model was exhibited at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. You can find out more about the artist at sorayama.jp.

27. Hiroyuki Shindo

© Hiroyuki Shindo, Indigo Textile — © Hiroyuki Shindo, Indigo Textile

Textile artist Hiroyuki Shindo has dedicated his life to the advancement of the centuries-old Japanese indigo dye technique. Using the rich Neptunian color to create original art sculpture in the form of these exceptional textile balls, he aims to draw much-needed attention from across the world.

You definitely should visit his Little Indigo Museum in a dedicated 200 year old wooden home just outside Kyoto: shindo-shindigo.com. If you’re interested in the art of Temari balls, check out these 5 Things to Know about the artform.

28. Yamaguchi Ryuun

© Yamaguchi Ryuun, Abundant Waters, Bamboo Sculpture

You can almost feel the spray from the eponymous Abundant Waters of Yamaguchi Ryuun’s bamboo sculpture.

The tilt of the boat with its fine hull weave may bring to mind the struggling craft in Hokusai’s famous Great Wave. Is that a great wave crashing over the deck?

For 60 years Ryuun has been weaving together bamboo arts that set the imagination afloat. This sculpture is part of the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at mfa.org.

29. Tokujin Yoshioka

© Tokujin Yoshioka, Grid Body, Resin Sculpture — © Tokujin Yoshioka, Grid Body, Resin Sculpture

Conceptual artist Tokujin Yoshioka conjures this human-form sculpture from a single piece of acrylic resin.

365 separate sheets cut from resin were assembled into an anthropomorphic grid. The result is a series of expressive and vivacious mannequins, which were installed at the Tokyo National Art Center for an outstanding exhibition by fashion icon Issey Miyake.

Find out more about this innovative artist at tokujin.com.

30. Masaya Kushino

© Masaya Kushino, Bird-Witched Shoes — © Masaya Kushino, Bird-Witched Shoes

Are Masaya Kushino’s ‘bird-witched’ shoes wearable art sculpture or collectible fashion?

Kushino began his career as a fashion designer, but was attracted by the sculptural potential of footwear, and started his own label in 2007. “Clothes are considered well-shaped only when a person actually wears them, but in the case of shoes it’s a whole different thing because the shapes evolve on their own,” says Kushino.

Kushino’s statuesque sculpture appeals to art collectors and fashionistas alike. This pair will form part of the collection at London’s prestigious V&A Museum.

Visit this original designer at his site at masayakushino.jp.