30 Japanese Women Artists You Really Should Know

by Jes Kalled | Updated July 2022 | ART

© Nahoko Kojima, Shiro Paper Cut Sculpture, 2018

Japan’s art history is one of the richest in the world. As in many fields, it’s often the men that get the most press, but it is Japanese women who have always pushed the boundaries of art, while battling for the recognition they deserve.

To really get the full picture of modern art in Japan, here is our selection of 30 of the nation’s most fascinating women artists. You can also check out our list of the most famous female painters in Japan.

1. Yayoi Kusama

When it comes to iconic Japanese women artists, they don’t get much bigger than Yayoi Kusama, who is perhaps the most famous female artist working today. Most art lovers will be familiar with her polka-dotted pumpkins, which Kusama considers "the most humorous of vegtables"!

Having spent her whole life battling with hallucinations, Kusama took to art to help deal with her internal struggles by putting them in a physical realm. Though almost 90 years old, Kusama is working as prolifically as ever; in fact she recently opened the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Shunjuku, Tokyo, which is so popular that you have to reserve tickets months in advance! Even if you don’t have a chance to visit Tokyo, you can probably find some works by this prolific artist somewhere near you! Check out 14 Best Places in the World to See Kusama Yayoi's Art to find out more.

2. Chiharu Shiota

The Osaka-born, Berlin-based Shiota Chiharu is one of Japan’s most important and groundbreaking installation artists. Over the years she has become most well known for her immersive, panoramic webs created by threads, hoses or other most abstract objects. For Shiota the links that she forms represent the interconnectedness of people and things, and the complex interwoven nature of human relationships.

Despite living in Germany since 1996, Shiota is widely celebrated at home as one of the Japan’s most famous modern artists, and a role model for women artists everywhere. She was selected to represent Japan at the Venice Bienniale in 2014.

3. Chie Fueki

Japanese-American painter, Chie Fueki, is a unique kind of creator. She applies a systematic practice of cutting, collaging, painting, and drawing into her work. The pieces themselves are large scale paintings that capture contemporary life in an active and colorful form. Incorporating symbols, graphics, and historical allusions, a Fueki painting can transport the viewer somewhere else. In an interview about her work she said, “I didn’t want to make anything political, but something that’s neutral. And that would still question the state of the world.”

4. Tabaimo

“I create situations that make viewers feel uneasy and participate more actively” says Tabaimo in a video produced by the Swedish museum Moderna Museet. The contemporary Japanese animator has showcased her work all over the world, and is well known for her video installations that are both magical and uncomfortable by nature. Tabaimo’s work tends to focus on society, particularly the social workings of Japan, and questioning them in her own way.

Her animation style contains elements of ukiyo-e and early manga drawings, but is altogether made her own by dislocating or dismembering the subjects of her illustration. In her video installation, Japanese Commuter Train, 2001, one can see a pile of disembodied human hands sitting on the floor. The passengers take no notice, and are either absorbed in their newspapers, cell phones, or sleep. Her installations are surreal, often transporting viewers to various urban or natural landscapes as if in invitation. “When I’m making my work, I take 50% of the responsibility, the other half of the responsibility is on the viewer. Then the work is complete.” says Tabaimo in her video public conVENience (2006) that explores the “boundaries or lack thereof” in public and private spaces.

5. Mariko Mori

© Mori Moriko, Wave UFO, from Sean Kelly Gallery

Moriko Mori is an artist whose works meld the history of Japan with her fascinating futuristic visions. Born in Tokyo in 1967, Mariko Mori, studied in London and New York, eventually returning to Tokyo to pursue the layers of future and self in her work.

From cyborgs to mermaids, Mori appears in her photographs and sculptures creating a kind of hybrid self image. The artist seems especially interested in technology and communication as it relates to immersion with the body. Her work has showcased her work internationally and currently resides in New York City.

In 2010 Mori founded a non-profit organization, known as the Faou Foundation, which celebrates the relationship between art and the natural environment by creating contemporary art installations around the globe.

6. Shirley Kaneda

© Shirley Kaneda, Senseless Lucidity, 2018

Born in Japan to Korean parents, Shirely Kaneda expresses her familiarity in having a “hybrid identity.” In a talk at New York Studio School in 2018, Kaneda reflects on a picture of her family taken in 1954 in Japan. The photo shows her mother and brother dressed in western clothes, and her as a baby dressed in a colorful Korean National dress, one that she reasons could have inspired and even formed some of her “visual sensibilities.” Her work as an abstract painter aims to question what it means to be abstract, and often searches for ways in which sensitivity can be touched, elevated to that of an intellectual experience. In extracting sensitivity from the onlooker, her paintings offer a palpable reaction as evidence of being worthy of “existing critically.” She says that being an artist is like “Searching to know what you’re doing, and trying to unknow it at the same time...Abstract painting, unlike other mediums, has to prove itself constantly.” The titles of her paintings, such as Senseless Lucidity or Confident Apprehension, seem to echo these sentiments of opposition that we find in both art and in life.

7. Mika Ninagawa

One woman whose work is emblazoned across the artistic spectrum is Mika Ninagawa. The photographer and film director rose to popularity of the back of her vibrantly colored photos of flowers, which pop with a manic energy brighter than the neon signs of Tokyo. Imagine if you will a Japanese style wedding with an outfit as powerful as this one!

Not one to be held back by sticking to particular mediums, over the years Ninagawa has found great success in the film making and advertizing worlds too.

8. Tsuruko Yamazaki

Abstract painter, Tsuruko Yamazaki, painted vibrantly. In addition to her well-known paintings adorned with stripes and vivid colors, she also made sculptures with not-so-traditional materials. Her work, Tin cans, was none other than tin cans covered in dye and lacquer. Yamazaki was one of the founding members of the Gutai Art Association, an avante-garde group in the 1950’s. She was the only woman in the group who stayed from beginning to its end. Though she didn’t receive accolades until later in life, her work became known for its sense of urgency and the way it went against one’s expectations.

9. Monika Mogi

Monika Mogi is well known in Tokyo for being one of the youngest and most genuine photographers in the fashion scene, though the artist has said that she’s not that interested in fashion itself. The photographer is self taught and began her career by taking photos of her close circle of friends who were models. “I don’t change the way I shoot depending on which magazine I shoot for,” said the photographer in an interview with Metal Magazine. Mogi is pioneering in the sense that she wants to see the constraints of this conservative and sexist world of photography and fashion change. She’s trying to do so from the inside out.

10. Nanase Ohkawa

The mid-1980’s brought us Clamp, the all-female Japanese manga group that produced works such as Tsubasa, and Cardcaptor Sakura. Nanase Ohkawa, their leader and director and storyboarder, is chiefly responsible for writing the scripts that Clamp produces, and guiding the story-telling process. The other members of their now four person group take on the roles of illustrating and expanding character development. Before their rise to fame, the members lived together in a small two bedroom apartment in Tokyo. Ohkawa has said that she thought she was “going to die there.” They did not. The group continues to thrive and work collaboratively using their own system of editing and proofing.

In an interview with the New York Times in 2006, Ohkawa spoke about the role of women in both animation and manga professions, inferring that the manga scene offered more opportunities for women than that of the world of animation. “It’s a way for them to express themselves freely. Strong female characters have become very common in manga…”

To learn more about some incredible manga artists, visit 20 Best Female Manga Artists You Need to Know!

11. Rinko Kawauchi

Top Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi’s work first really gained a mainstream international success in around 2001 when she ambitiously dropped three photography books: Utatane, Hanabi, and Kanako simultaneously.

Her charmed and delicate style of photography scored her an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. Focusing on capturing the ordinary moments of everyday life, her work makes even the most mundane appear so beautiful.

Photography fans should also check out the 20 Best Japanese Female Photographers You Should Know!

12. Megumi Igarashi (Rokudenashiko)

Rokudenashiko is a vagina artist. Upon first realizing she didn’t know or understand what her vagina looked like, she took to investigating its appearance and nature through sculpture. Using a 3D printer, Igarashi scanned her vagina to make a kayak, which she aptly titled “Vagina Boat.” She has also made dioramas and small 3D scanned sculptures she calls “Deco-man,” which is a play on words for the Japanese word for vagina, manko, which is widely considered taboo to speak about.

Her mission quickly turned from one of curiosity to one of vigilance when she received backlash for the work she was doing. The artist was arrested twice for her artwork and was charged with obscenity. The result pushed her further into her vagina inquiries. She questions the society that oppresses, censors, and hides female genitalia. “Penis, on the other hand,” she says, “has been used in plenty of art and has become an acceptable part of pop culture. But vagina has never been considered cute. Vagina has been thought of as obscene because it has been overly hidden; although it is just a natural part of a woman’s body.” Now, Igarashi holds workshops for women who are curious about their vaginas and want a 3D sculpture of their own. In an effort to normalize the vagina in a society that refuses to, she intends to make vagina smartphone cases, lampshades, and other accessible items. “I want to make the vagina more casual and pop.”

13. Yoshiko Shimada

© Shimada Yoshiko, Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman, 2012

Yoshiko Shimada is known for her work that engages audiences in issues of society and its attitude towards women, and sexuality. More specifically, she investigates the construction of organizations and governments that hold power, shedding light on the particular abuses they have committed against women and other minorities. Working with mediums such as performance, sculptures, and video installations, Shimada invokes pathos and conversation about the state of affairs of our governments in both the past and present.

Throughout the last decade, Shimada’s installation Becoming a Statue of a Japanese Comfort Woman has become somewhat of a viral phenomenon. The installation is site specific, in which Shimada sits in a chair, emulating the bronze statue that pays tribute to the Korean women who were enforced into prostitution during World War II. In 2017, after the mayor of Osaka announced he would cut ties with San Francisco because they installed a similar statue, several artists took to the streets and imitated Shimada’s art. Again in 2019, women all over the world took photos of themselves emulating the statue in response to an exhibition being censored at the Aichi Triennale 2019 International Arts festival. The exhibition, rather ironically titled After 'Freedom of Expression?', contained a similar-looking statue and was canceled due to the political controversy.

14. Miyako Ishiuchi

Japan has no shortage of talented female photographers, and Miyako Ishiuchi is one name that sits atop that list. Born in 1947 in Gunma and raised in Yokosuka, she was deeply influenced by the atmosphere of Japan’s major ports and cities which were occupied by US military post World War II. Her first book was a collection of images captured around Yokosuka. In 2014 she became the first Asian woman to receive the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography.

“Photography is just an instant..” she said photographer in an interview by the Louisiana Channel. “...To be able to catch this compressed moment, you need to operate on a high cultural level.” Her advice to young artists and photographers is to develop curiosity, and to pursue it.

Her famous series, Mother’s, captures moments she shared with her mother, and images of her things after her death. This photo series appeared in the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Ishiuchi’s heart-wrenching photo collections Hiroshima, documenting the personal and everyday objects found after the atomic blast, was presented to former US president Barack Obama during his historic visit to the city.

15. Hanae Mori

Hanae Mori, now 96 years old, is known as a leading fashion designer on an international scale. She was the first Asian woman to be accepted into the official haute couture design house. Her dress and costume making began in the movie industry, where she made hundreds of pieces for the silver screen. Eventually she opened a showroom in Paris, and designed uniforms for Japan Airlines (JAL), Japanese Delegation for the Olympics, among others. Her business has since expanded beyond the runway to perfumes and aromas, and her work is available worldwide in places like Nordstrom, H&M, and small boutiques in Harajuku.

16. Mieko Shiomi

Mieko Shiomi is an experimental composer and improviser who redefines sounds and music. To Shiomi and her group of other experimental musicians called Ongaku, non-musical sounds such as kitchenware, radio, and a vacuum cleaner were proper means for creating a new kind of music beyond the limitations of what was expected. Shiomi was very active in her experimentations in the 1960’s and 1970’s, thus participating in the worldwide artists’ movement called Fluxus which prioritized process over final product.

In a video interview with CMap (a research program at MoMA) in 2011, Shiomi describes her motivation for performing and creating music with her group, Ongaku. She depicts a 1960’s Tokyo where “most young people wanted to destroy old, academic art,” and in which her own group took on the responsibility of creating a replacement. “We insisted our music is the music of the future.” Her creative process is both meditative and imaginative, using techniques such as staring at inanimate objects for long periods of time to see how they fit together or relate to one another. “I listened to their resonance,” she says, “to make combinations and order.”

17. Kimiko Nishimoto

With 269K followers to date, 94 year old Kimiko Nishimoto, is the obaasan photographer and internet celebrity everyone needs to ignite their imaginations. Nishimoto came late to photography after spending her life as a homemaker, hairdresser, and cyclist. At 72, Nishimoto took a beginner’s photography class then quickly delved into experiments with self-portraiture. In many of her photos she is floating, posing, or disappearing thanks to her deep appreciation of image editing software. Residing in her home town of Kumamoto, Nishimoto states that her work is meant to inspire joy, and create fun.

18. Makiko Hattori

Ceramics, one of Japan’s most classic art forms is the domain of Makiko Hattori, whose wonderfully textured creations present an illusion of the senses. Covering her creations with tiny bundles of carefully shaped clay shavings, the surfaces of Hattori’s ceramic sculptures are so densely packed that they require a six-month drying period. Check out her contemporary works at the Joan B Mirviss Gallery in New York or Joanna Bird in London.

For more Japanese ceramics, check out Japan’s 11 Best Female Ceramic Artists!

19. Yuni Yoshida

Tokyo born graphic designer and art director, Yuni Yoshida, is making waves in the fashion and art world. Working with big names in Japanese advertising such as La Foret, LUMINE, PARCO and et cetera, Yoshida specializes in colorful, clear cut design that pops. The subjects of her photos range from celebrities like Naomi Watanabe to pixelated cheeseburgers and pineapples.

Her first solo exhibition in 2014, IMAGINATOMY, allowed her audience to see her detailed work for the first time solo of her teacher/mentor Onuki Takuya. Often featuring women as the centerpiece of her photos, Yoshida likes to layer and peel the real from the unreal, playing with surreal imagery and deconstructing recognizable symbols. High heels made of vegetables such as broccoli or carrots; women with lipstick for legs; and pixelated-appearing food are just some of her vibrant ideas.What looks like a photo of a woman can also contain a projection of herself onto her hand upon closer inspection. A collection of books falling over on a bookshelf can also be put back together to create the image of a woman, like some kind of visual puzzle. Her work is both intriguing and aesthetically pleasing, never hesitating to accentuate fashion or beauty techniques in the symmetry she seems to love to slightly disrupt.

Working with brands such as Uniqlo, Parco, and La Foret Harajuku, Yoshida has made waves in the industry. “I like seeing what I can get away with,” she said in an interview with UT magazine.

20. Yoko Ono

As a celebrity, Yoko Ono needs no introduction. For seven decades, Ono has been pushing the boundaries of art and music, often bringing public attention to areas, such as performance art, that had previously been ignored. She has also devoted herself tirelessly to the cause of world peace, which is something we can all get behind.

In this Bad Dancer music video produced in 2013, Ono subverts the myth that the modern art scene is all serious talk and business. We just love how much fun she is having with it!

21. Toko Shinoda

Sumi ink painter, Toko Shinoda, was born in 1913 in Dalian, Manchuria. She and her family returned to Japan at an early age when she would begin calligraphy, and eventually take to sumi ink. Working primarily with a monochrome color scheme but occasionally known for bowling audiences over with her strokes of bright red, Shinoda evokes ideas of abstraction and adaptation from the traditional calligraphy style. More specifically, Shinoda makes use of the empty spaces created and harbored by her precision in making lines. Murals, wall paintings, and fusuma panels are just some of her creations.

Not long after World War II, Shinoda went on several solo trips to the U.S., Europe, and back to Japan. Influenced perhaps by the boom in Abstract Expressionism, but also tied to her calligraphy roots, her works thrived in the in between place, driving inspiration from the mistakes she made as a younger artist and expounding on them ever since. Her fame grew, and in 1983 was likened to Picasso in TIME magazine, a title which she has since refused to adopt. Although the recipient of many awards and recognition, Shinoda has stayed quite far away from accepting any of them. She is still working today as she approaches her 107th birthday. In an interview with a representative from Sakuranoki gallery in 2012, Shinoda said: “I imagine the viewer also has two things going on: times when they want to give free rein to their imagination and sense all kinds of worlds from an abstract painting, yet also times when, for example when they are fatigued, rather than engaging with the painting in a flight of fancy, they prefer to rely on what is generated by the calligraphy.”

If you’d like to try your own hand at Sumi-e, check out All You Need to Know About Japanese Ink Painting!

22. Kimiko Yoshida

Feminist artist, Kimiko Yoshida, left Japan to leave behind the suppression she felt as a woman. In 1995, she moved to France and began her career. The visual artist focuses on themes of femininity and identity. Regarding her project, “Painting, Self-Portrait,” she states “I am basically saying that there is no such thing as a self-portrait. Each of these photographs is actually a ceremony of disappearance. It is not an emphasis of identity, but the opposite—an erasure of identity.” The artist isn’t afraid to blend times; some of her work pulling from both historical and contemporary influences—using her body as the cite, or rather, the canvas onto which an idea unfolds or disappears.

The extraordinary series, Painting, Self-portrait, the Paris-based artist dissects the multiple meanings of nomadic culture and female identity. As she cycles through many different modes of dress and cultural symbols, Yoshida is able to represent innumerable points of view through her artwork. Yet by always using herself as the subject, all theses perspectives are drawn together as one, highlighting the fundamental unity in cultural diversity.

23. Asami Kiyokawa

© Kiyokawa Asami, Hana Sugisaki × Swallow

Asami Kiyokawa uses a needle and thread to embroider her photographs. The colorful design creates imaginative scenes, often spreading from the subject of the photo and taking the viewer in all directions. The photos, of which the subjects are usually female, are decorated with stitches of plants, animals, or designs that seem to be coming from inside the model: a kind of subjective reflection of their inner nature.

The artist is the youngest so far to have an exhibition in Mito Art Tower, and has since continued to make waves in art communities of all mediums. Kiyokawa’s intention stems from her curiosity in what makes us insecure or afraid. In an interview with Omotesando Hills online magazine, Kiyokawa expressed, “I feel that beauty that encompasses the negative is the most beautiful of all.” Her lifetime project, Bijo Saishu, aims to make women shine. The project has now been ongoing for over 15 years, with many women asking her to include them in her art. As a woman herself, she lends a perspective to the reality that many women experience. “Worries and psychological hangups,” especially for those working in a public field where their image is constantly consumed and judged, are some of the themes that she works through in her design. She aims to naturalize these insecurities and make them beautiful.

24. Tomoko Konoike

© Konoike Tomoko, Donning Animal Skins and Braided Grass

Contemporary Japnaese surrealist, Konoike Tomoko, is making humans into animals, or rather returning humans to nature as if this is our original form, as she plays with traditional and rural motifs to create surrealist sculptures and paintings, but in a recognizably Japanese style.

Her nihonga style paintings are large in scale, and at times using mixed materials such as animal pelts. In an interview with Metropolis Magazine in Tokyo, Konoike stated, “I think my work suggests liberation of human thoughts, freeing ourselves from our conventional ways of human life.” The artist aims to touch the animal inside the viewer, as if hoping to wake us up. Konoike took a break from making art after the 2011 Tsunami and Earthquake, but has since returned to work after reconsidering her approach.

For this piece Donning Animal Skins and Braided Grass, an aluminium frame with shards of mirror creates the ethereal impression of a Japanese wolf. The species, sadly now extinct, held a much more positive cultural role than its counterpart in Europe. It was considered a messenger of the gods, and a protector of travelers. Konoike’s glittering sculpture certainly lends the creature an air of otherworldly power.

25. Hiromi/Hiromu Arakawa

Hiromu Arakawa is the pen name of well known manga artist Arakawa Hiromi. The most famous of her creations being none other than The Fullmetal Alchemist, a fantasy about two young brothers wading through ideas of morality, and magic. The series took off both inside and outside Japan and was later made into two anime series. In 2004, FullMetal Alchemist won the Shogakukan Manga Award. The story was serialized into two different animations with different endings, and to this day is one of the best-selling manga series in the world.

Arakawa is often praised for her dark themes and distinguished storytelling that is both emotional and relatable. Some have lamented that the Fullmetal Alchemist anime series, which has a different ending than the original manga, doesn’t do her well-crafted story justice.

Some readers have maintained their surprise that Arakawa’s shonen manga stories, which are traditionally made for teenage boys, were told by a woman, and not by a man. She has since responded to this and stated, “Nowadays, each writer has their own specialty. It doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman.” Although the field of writing and creating manga has grown exponentially for women in recent times, it is not without difficulty that women find their way to the top. Arakawa herself used a male pen name so that she could have more success.

26. Nahoko Kojima

Nahoko Kojima has been studying the art of cutting paper since she was the tender age of five. As a contemporary artist pulling inspiration from cities like Tokyo and London, she continues to expound her kirigami skills to create larger than life sculptures and installations out of paper. Interestingly, despite the size of her work, it emulates a sense of fragility. The element of paper, with its thin and delicate demeanor, is not lost on audiences, even those standing next to her life-size depiction of a whale.

“...For me sculpture is not static, it’s not just about one moment in time. In my work I try to capture the processes of change and augmentation.” Says Kojima in a short documentary on her YouTube channel. Her inspiration pulls from animals, plants, and nature, and she doesn’t limit herself to the positive but also experiments with the negative. Kojima co-founded her own paper cutting consultation company, Solo & Kojima, in 2011 with the hopes of spreading Japanese paper cutting style to other countries around the world. Now based in London, Kojima continues to create works with great patience and the understanding that with one mistake she must start all over again from the beginning. “My focus is on timelessness and a much wider, more spiritual view of the life in everything.”

Learn more about the 5 Greatest Kirie Japanese Paper-Cutting Artists You Should Know!

27. Aya Takano

All things imaginary captured Aya Takano’s soul as she poured over science fiction and natural science books in her father's library as a child. Her paintings on canvas today reflect strange, androgynous beings mid-growth, their elbow and knee joints shaded red to show they haven’t reached full length yet. A mentee of the famous Takashi Murakami, the inventor of the postmodern Superflat art genre, Takano was likely drawn to his willingness to blur the lines between different realities, which is Takano’s specialty at heart.

The painter was largely influenced by the world surrounding her, but readapted its messages to suit her own ideal one. The waif-like characters in her paintings seem to be in harmony with nature. The child-like quality of her manga-esque characters resemble that of other-worldly beings, in that they can’t completely be placed in this world (of the superficial kawaii) or the next. Takano describes the sensation of gaining “downloaded” movies or images from her “third eye” in Manifesto, an online art & culture magazine. In a world overloaded with imagery, sounds, and cultural trends that overtake us, it’s incredibly interesting to see how it transmits through Aya Takano, erased, condensed, or otherwise transmuted.

28. Shigeko Kubota

Known as an avant-garde video and sculpture artist with a strong sense of DIY aesthetic, Shigeko Kubota was born in Tokyo but largely worked in New York City due to some critical tension in Japan that tended to dismiss avant-garde art, especially the women artists who partook. Kubota joined the Fluxus community in New York City when she moved there in 1964.

Renowned for her installations with video, sculpture and performance, is a prominent figure in avante garde and arguably feminist Japanese art. Her videos (at times on loop, as seen in Nude descending a staircase) were often shown in three dimensional structures with several screens. Her written work and poems were sometimes shown alongside her videos. Kubota did not hesitate to dive into personal themes the way she did with My Father, which was about her father’s passing, nor did she shy away from radical positionings as she did in her work: Video is the Vengeance of Vagina.

One of her most famous performances, Vagina Painting (1965), involved her attaching a paintbrush to her underwear, squatting over white paper and painting red paint onto its surface, reminiscent of menstrual blood. As a fluxus artist, she considered it an experiment or a play more than anything else.

29. Yuki Ogura

Ogura Yuki was a nihonga painter. She became the first female artist of the Japan Fine Arts Community in 1932. Her paintings, which were stylized in the traditional sensibilities and conventions of nihonga, were mostly of women. The style that she adopted, although traditional, can also be thought of as relatively modern when considering the circumstantial standards of Western influence that was coming into Japan during the Meiji restoration. By using traditional Japanese standards to paint, Ogura was holding onto Japanese culture in a way that distinguished her from others who were delving into western sensibilities.

Her paintings embody the stillness and shape of the women she painted, however, unlike other male nihonga painters maintained a kind of flexibility in her work. In her famous painting, Women Bathing (1938), Ogura left behind some of the conventions of nihonga style and instead went for a more direct approach of observation, allowing the tiles of the bath to be seen through the slightly moving and transparent water. Her depiction of women, flowers, and vases over the years can be studied in detail; one can see the small slight changes of a country in flux amidst a background of carefully crafted beauty and technique.

30. Takako Saito

Known especially for her special chess sets and performance silent music, Takako Saito was also a member of the Fluxus movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Her famous spice chess invention removed the typical pieces of the game and replaced them with spices, such as “knights made of ginger.” This meant a player of spice chess had to begin to memorize the smells of each piece before playing. Similar to her other variations on the subject of chess, her creations initiated that other senses of perception had to be rendered in order for a player to properly follow the rules of the original game, or to be able to recognize or indulge in a particular experience wholly.

Saito has produced over 400 pieces of work in her time as an artist, and has not been limited to one medium. Currently residing in Dusseldorf, Germany, Saito continues to experiment and play with elements of creation. Her work consists of performance art, the recreation of games, every-day items, sculptures, and even more recently her own clothing design. A recent video online shows her experimenting with sound and music creation whilst her and two others don a white robe of sorts with many items attached for making noise.

Who is your favorite Japanese female artist working today? Let us know if there's someone you think we should have included in the comments below!