Why Hold a Solo Show in Azabu-Juban — Calligraphy and a Town's Empty Space

Why Not Roppongi

When I was looking for a place to hold my first solo exhibition, Zen, I walked several neighborhoods. Roppongi, where the world's art collects, would have been faultless for showing calligraphy as contemporary art — the National Art Center and the Mori Art Museum are both within walking distance. And yet what I chose was Azabu-Juban, next door but running at a slightly slower speed.

The reason lies in this town's sense of ma — of interval. One street off the main road, an old shopping arcade survives, with a long-established bean-snack shop and a soba house, and beyond it the torii gate of the Juban Inari shrine. Foreign languages are ordinary here, with embassies close by, yet the deeper you go into the back lanes the quieter it becomes. International, but never taller than human scale. My calligraphy treats white not as a background but as a material, and the empty space of this town has the same structure. That is why I chose it.

The Speed of a Town Sets the Speed of a Line

The day I first visited Palette Gallery (2-9-4 Azabu-Juban, about three minutes on foot from Azabu-Juban Station), I climbed the slope carrying a single rolled full sheet, 84 by 160 centimeters. Carrying a work is also a way of measuring a town with the body. When I hung it provisionally on the wall, the north window light caught the soft edge of the ink's bleed and gave it a face it never had under fluorescent light. In this light I could show the coldness of blue-toned ink and the warmth of brown-toned ink without killing either. The moment my hands learned the height of that wall, I decided.

I also saw a large white-box space — high ceilings, impressive — but the instant I hung a scroll there, the work floated and turned cold. Calligraphy loses its breath when the vessel is too big. It is inside the human scale of Azabu-Juban, where you arrive before you are even out of breath and the sounds of the arcade reach the wall only faintly, that a single line stays alive.

Six Days, with Scent and Sound

The exhibition runs six days, August 5 to 10, 2026, open throughout. The brevity is deliberate. Before the town's end-of-August summer festival builds its heat, I wanted to raise a space of calligraphy, scent, and sound in the quiet days just ahead of it. On my scouting visit I burned a single incense to test, with my body, whether its smell would quarrel with the ink. Over the faintly sweet trace of animal glue, a thin thread of sandalwood settled, and the room gained one more layer of depth. On why I bring scent and sound into a show, see Designing Space Around Calligraphy; for first-time visitors, How to Enjoy a Calligraphy Exhibition; and for dates and directions, the Zen exhibition page. Choosing a place, it turned out, was already the start of making the work.