Gamechanger in Japan?

Tokyo is the second richest city in the world after New York. This makes the area around the Japanese capital an ideal place for art fairs. In Yokohama, an immediate neighbouring city, the Nippon International Contemporary Art Fair opened in 1992 as the first major of its kind in Asia. Its success was limited, however, as Japanese visitors in the 1990s saw the fairs more as a place for exhibitions than for trade. The Art Fair Tokyo has been in existence since 2005 and has benefited from the change in attitudes towards fair buying that has taken place in the meantime. The Asian art market has been growing rapidly ever since.

In September 2022, Frieze Seoul celebrated its premiere. It is by no means the only new art fair in East Asia. In January 2023, Singapore will host the first edition of ART SG, which, like Toyko Gendai (jpn. contemporary), is part of Art Assembly. This reflects the enormous expansion of the Asian art market and the increased interest of East Asian collectors in international works of art. At Christie's and Sotheby's auction houses, about a third of the buyers of 20th and 21st century art in 2021 came from Asian countries, and the trend is rising.

The focus is particularly on Japan: the taste of Japanese art collectors has long been trend-setting for East Asian countries. Recent tax breaks for local art galleries and auction houses and a new young generation of collectors who think much more internationally underline Japan's position. Magnus Renfrew, co-founder of the Art Assembly, points to the exceptional collecting tradition among Japanese in general, which is also noticeable on the art market.

Opening another art fair in Japan seems obsolete because of the saturated market. But appearances are deceptive. East Asian and especially Japanese fairs largely offer works of art in the medium price segments. Sales for several million US dollars, which are more common at Art Basel or Frieze London, are rare here. Tokyo Gendai wants to close this gap and spare Japanese collectors such long journeys − and attract foreign collectors to Tokyo.

Yasuaki Ishizaka, Sotheby's Managing Director for Japan, points to the reach of Japanese art collectors and their desire to buy prestigious works of art by famous artists. In 2022, for example, a Japanese collector bought a Warhol self-portrait from Sotheby's for nearly 15.5 million US dollars. The world's top collectors include comparatively many Japanese such as Takeo Obayashi, Hiroshi Taguchi, Miwa Taguchi-Sugiyawa and Tadashi Yanai.

The director of Tokyo Gendai, Eri Takane, shows similar anticipation: »An art fair of this scale has been long anticipated in Japan […]. Tokyo Gendai will be a key hub for Asian and Western galleries while also serving as a site for collectors and visitors to not only discover exceptional contemporary art but also immerse themselves in Japanese culture.«

The rapid growth also has its negative sides, as Satoru Arai points out. Arai is the director of Gallery COMMON, located near Tokyo's Harajuku station, a hub of the fashion and street art scenes. »There is a certain segment of the art audience that is motivated by the prospect of gaining profit through fast-paced resale«, he said. »In terms of expanding the market, welcoming a new clientele is not a bad thing, but the repetition of speed reselling and secondary market price inflation will only lead to short-lived artist careers.«

Japanese art fairs place great emphasis on representing local artists − one reason why prices do not reach the top levels of the most famous fairs. Art Assembly's hope is that by attracting international galleries to Tokyo, the regional art scene can be rediscovered, taken to other countries and produce stable, long-term artists' careers. It seeks to bring the galleries to the artists, rather than the other way around. This could be the gamechanger for contemporary Japanese art.