An immersive digital art exhibition, titled “Immersive Museum Tokyo Volume 3,” is being held this year until Tuesday October 29 at the Belle Salle Shinjuku Minami-guchi event space in Tokyo. The event’s theme—Impressionism and Japonism—compares works by Vincent van Gogh with those of Katsushika Hokusai, and works by Claude Monet and those of Utagawa Hiroshige.
Until Sunday September 8 (starting each day at 4:30 p.m.), the event will include a special exhibition called Immersive Museum Yoasobi, which focuses on the creation of a song called “Umi no Manimani” (literally, at the mercy of the sea) by the Japanese pop duo Yoasobi.
The exhibition, the third installment in the Immersive Museum series, follows Immersive Museum Impressionism in 2022 and Immersive Museum Tokyo Post-Impression in 2023. The events proved to be extremely popular, together having attracted over half a million visitors.
This year’s exhibition focuses on Impressionism and ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints from the Edo era). Deploying leading-edge digital technology, the event synchronizes scenes depicted in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works of Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh with ukiyo-e works by Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, two Japanese artists who influenced Western painters.
The exhibition space is organized around eight scenes from ukiyo-e works that lucidly depict the lives of common people and their natural surroundings. Capturing the vivid multi-colored images and bold layouts and angles of these prints, the video displays transform each of the scenes into a work from Europe to demonstrate the influence of Japanese woodblock prints on Western painting as it reached the summit of traditional religious imagery.
By comparing pairs of works that transcend national boundaries at a time when the exchange of information was limited, the exhibition immerses viewers into the perspectives of the Japanese woodblock artists and European painters through an experiential journey.
In the exhibition’s interactive space—a big hit with visitors last year—Katsushika Hokusai comes back to life through the power of AI. This AI version of the artist can gradually create an ukiyo-e-style portrait of a visitor against a backdrop depicting his or her hometown if the visitor tells the AI monitor where he or she is from.
The technology uses color patterns based on analyses of the colors that Hokusai actually used, giving visitors an opportunity to see how their own ukiyo-e portraits would look if the artist was still alive.
In addition to the works of art, a special exhibition features an immersive musical experience, Immersive Museum Yoasobi, which is being held for a limited time.
Through displays and immersive video images, visitors to this exhibition can experience the literary origins of the song “Umi no Manimani” by the pop duo Yoasobi, which has become very popular in Japan and around the world.
Based on the novel Yurei (ghost) by Mizuki Tsujimura, the duo’s composer Ayase created the melody and vocalist Ikura breathed life into the composition with her singing. Visitors can experience the process of the song’s creation in the two-floor exhibition space, and even create videos derived from the song’s lyrics in the venue’s interactive area.
Inside the venue, the Immersive Museum Café offers a menu of original food and beverages inspired by impressionist artwork and ukiyo-e prints, as well as Yoasobi’s music. A merchandise area is selling a variety of unique goods that cannot be purchased anywhere else.
Comment from producer, Dentsu Inc.’s Takahiro Noguchi
“Thanks to the support of many people and organizations, Immersive Museum exhibitions have attracted more than 600,000 visitors to date. When we first started planning this project back in 2019, the English concept expressed by the word “immersive” was not commonly known in Japan, but over the past five years, we have seen an explosion of immersive content across the country. Against that backdrop, we have been working hard to make Immersive Museum exhibitions more innovative every time we hold them.
“The artistic theme of this year’s exhibition is Impressionism and ukiyo-e. We produced spaces and visuals to enhance the immersive experience, so I hope visitors enjoy it. We also deployed advanced AI-generated art that allows visitors to not only experience the exhibition, but also try making their own personalized artwork to take home and cherish.
“Also this year, we are holding Immersive Museum Yoasobi as a special exhibition in collaboration with Yoasobi, giving visitors a chance to experience how this pop duo produced a song based on a novel. Immersive Museum provides an opportunity for people to experience Yoasobi’s music in ways that completely differ from their live concerts and music videos, so I really encourage everyone to visit.
“By venturing from art to music, we expanded the scope of this year’s Immersive Museum exhibitions. Looking ahead, we intend to produce content for a broader range of areas, such as anime, movies, games, and sports, and hold exhibitions in more Japanese cities, as well as overseas. In the future, our team will continue working to bring amazing content, previously only experienced by a limited number of people, to a much wider audience.”
| Exhibition Details | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Immersive Museum Tokyo Volume 3 |
| Theme: | Impressionism and Japonism, a comparison of the works of Vincent van Gogh and Katsushika Hokusai, and Claude Monet and Utagawa Hiroshige |
| Dates: | Wednesday July 10 to Tuesday October 29, 2024 |
| Hours: | Weekdays—10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (entrance closes at 4:20 p.m.) Weekends, national holidays—9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (entrance closes at 4:20 p.m.) |
| Venue: | Belle Salle Shinjuku Minami-guchi 5-31-11 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo |
| Website: | https://immersive-museum.jp/tokyo/ |
| Special exhibition details | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Immersive Museum Yoasobi |
| Theme: | An experience of how the song “Umi no Manimani” was created |
| Dates: | Wednesday July 10 to Sunday September 8, 2024 |
| Hours: | 16:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. (entrance closes at 8:10 p.m.) on weekdays |
| Venue: | Belle Salle Shinjuku Minami-guchi 5-31-11 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo |
| Website: | https://yoasobi.immersive-museum.jp/en/ |
Related Link
Immersive Museum: Art & the Creation of a Song (Japanese language only)
