CURRENT EXHIBITION

A healing experimental collaboration installation featuring Haruka Hirata — certified ikebana Sogetsu instructor, one-handed spatial practitioner while embracing half-side paralysis after a stroke — not hidden, not softened, but lived exactly as it is — and musician Sapphire Slows. Together, they improvise and elevate frequency, breath, vibration, presence, and the sounds of Ikebana that are not normally audible, into sound. Dedicated to everyone carrying pain.

Novelist Yusho Takiguchi leads a diary-writing workshop where the entries don’t have to be true. Guided by Takiguchi, participants write diary entries that mix things that really happened with things they make up or imagine. What makes a piece of writing feel true? Writing one yourself is a good way to find out.

Open to: elementary to high school students (ages 6 to 18). Elementary school children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Language: Japanese

A lecture by Kyoko Tominaga, a sociologist known for her research on political and social movements, urban culture and self-governing communities. Her subject is places of belonging (Ibasho in Japanese): the places where people gather and feel they fit in. She looks at how such places come about and how they can be created, with examples ranging from neighbourhoods such as Omotesando to shared spaces, buildings and even podcasts.

Language: Japanese

Tatsuya Narita, a prototyping engineer at the design innovation firm Takram, shows participants how to assemble an electronic circuit board using a soldering iron and other tools. Participants build a small electronic toy with their own hands.
Please note: this workshop involves the use of a soldering iron.

Open to: elementary school children (ages 6 to 12) accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Language: Japanese

In haiku, talking about poems matters as much as writing them: commenting on each other’s verses and sharing impressions is part of the art. A kukai, or haiku gathering, usually takes place behind closed doors. This session opens the gathering to the public. The poems are presented without their authors’ names, and the guests discuss how each one might be read. The audience votes for their favourites along the way, so expect a free and spirited debate.

Language: Japanese

Login.jp serves as a digital archive that captures Japanese culture and daily life through music and art. Their live videos of DJ sets held on shopping streets, amidst rice paddies, and in public baths have garnered attention. Exploring the theme of "places of belonging", Login.jp brings together several DJs for an eight-hour live session, creating the atmosphere of listening to the radio at home.

*The tea culture community ochayoi will also serve tea, inviting visitors to experience "teaphoria", the calm yet alert feeling that drinking tea can bring. (ochayoi session: 15:30 - 19:30)

A workshop led by writer and artist Erika Kobayashi. Working in pairs, participants interview each other using a prepared list of questions, then draw a picture based on what they heard and give it to their partner. Everyone goes home with a drawing of their own story, made by someone who has just got to know them. Through this shared experience, participants explore how an encounter can create a sense of belonging.

Open to: ages 6 and up. Elementary school children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Language: Japanese

Kino Iglu is a mobile cinema that sets up screenings of films from around the world in a variety of settings. Responding to the theme of “places of belonging”, it has chosen Kim’s Video (2023, US), which will be screened at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo. Afterwards, a speaker from Kino Iglu will talk about the film and recommend others to watch.

Language: film in English with Japanese subtitles; talk in Japanese

Cultural anthropologist Maho Isono, co-author of the book that inspired the film All of a Sudden, gives a talk drawing on her new book, Before Society Collapses. She explores categorisation, the boundaries between groups and the role of inclusion, asking what places of belonging might look like in the future.

Language: Japanese, with sign language interpretation and real-time speech-to-text captions.

Sculptor Ryuta Iida, who is also one half of the artist duo Nerhol, leads a workshop in which participants build a small room by folding and assembling a paper template of a house. Surrounded by the large furniture installed in the Espace, each child designs their own tiny space however they like.

Open to: elementary school children (ages 6 to 12) accompanied by a parent or guardian. Younger siblings of preschool age are welcome to join in.
Language: Japanese

Edanoshin Katsura has been finding new ways for people to enjoy rakugo, Japan’s traditional art of comic storytelling, through collaborations with creators from other fields and new stories set in the present day. Tonight’s performance is built around the theme of “places of belonging”. In rakugo, a single performer kneeling on a cushion plays every character without a stage set, and the performer and each member of the audience picture the scene in their own head. That imagined world, different for every person in the room, is the place of belonging the evening explores. From 17:00 to 18:15, before the main performance, a casual listening party offers rakugo with explanations along the way.

Language: Japanese

An evening of readings by novelist Mariko Asabuki, whose novel Yume, her first full-length novel in eight years, comes out this year. Alongside passages from Yume, which features the 1945 air raids on Okayama and Hiratsuka, she gives the first public reading of “The Street Remembers”, a text written for a solo painting exhibition at Sanyodo Bookstore, which has stood at the Omotesando crossing for 135 years. She is then joined by the bookshop’s owner, Hideko Toyama. Drawing on the oral history interviews they have been conducting around Omotesando, they talk about the area’s past and what local people remember of it.

Language: Japanese

Login.jp serves as a digital archive that captures Japanese culture and daily life through music and art. Their live videos of DJ sets held on shopping streets, amidst rice paddies, and in public baths have garnered attention. Exploring the theme of "places of belonging", Login.jp brings together several DJs for a five-hour live session, creating the atmosphere of listening to the radio at home.

Led by Haruka Hirata, a certified Sogetsu ikebana instructor and spatial practitioner whose one-handed practice embraces her experience of paralysis on one side of her body following a stroke, this workshop invites participants to engage their senses — sight, smell, touch, and more — and discover flowers and plants from a fresh perspective. After exploring various plants and learning about ikebana, participants will discuss the plants with one another, then arrange them in a handmade bamboo vase, with guidance from Hirata. The workshop offers a welcoming opportunity to explore plants and ikebana together.

Language: Japanese

Artist Hirofumi Isoya, whose work centres on photography and sculpture, leads this workshop. Participants pick a favourite spot in the Espace and photograph it. Looking at the printed photo, they imagine the colours of that place and paint them onto the frame, so the finished piece combines the photo with their memory of the place. When is a work actually finished: when the photo is taken, or once someone looking at it adds what they see?

Open to: elementary to high school students (ages 6 to 18). Elementary school children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
Language: Japanese

Musicians Shuta Hasunuma and Kenta Tanaka hold a loose, improvised jam session in the “living room” set up inside Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo. It will feel a little like listening in on friends rehearsing at home. The music is made up on the spot, and sounds from the audience may end up shaping where it goes.

*The tea culture community ochayoi will also be serving tea, so visitors can try “teaphoria”, the calm yet alert feeling that drinking tea can bring. (ochayoi session: 15:00 - 19:00)

With Memorial, his striking debut novel, Bryan Washington became one of the leading voices in contemporary American fiction while still in his twenties. Jose Ando, a rising novelist who won the Akutagawa Prize for DTOPIA, is drawing growing attention abroad. Both have long written about community and queerness. They discuss the craft of fiction: how to create a narrator and give a story its voice, and whether writing can itself become a place where you belong, known in Japanese as Ibasho.

Language: English and Japanese, with consecutive interpretation from English into Japanese

Tanka are short poems built on a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern. They have been written and read in Japan for more than 1,300 years, from the Man’yoshu, the oldest surviving collection of Japanese poetry, to the present day. Tanka poet Hiroshi Homura talks about what makes the form so appealing. Participants can also take part in a writing session: they are given the second half of a poem (the shimo-no-ku, shown below) and write the first half (the kami-no-ku). Beginners are very welcome.

Language : Japanese

InSitu2 closes with a special Noh performance by Yaemon Yamashina, a lead actor (shite-kata) of the Kanze school. A Noh stage follows strict rules, and every element of it carries symbolic meaning. Here Yamashina performs away from that stage, in the space created for this programme at Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo. The performance explores how his dance responds to this distinctive setting. After the performance, Yamashina is scheduled to offer commentary on the piece.

Language: commentary in Japanese