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Sales at Tokyo Gendai Reflect an Evolving Market Surprisingly Resistant to Trend-Chasing

The fourth edition of the fair draws its energy from a new generation of Japanese galleries, collectors and artists, making it a crucial nexus for international buyers trying to understand the country's art ecosystem.

Tokyo Gendai opened to VIPs yesterday (Sept. 10) with 63 galleries, including 30 international exhibitors, for the final time at Pacifico Yokohama. The fair will move to the more central Ariake GYM-EX in 2027, aligning it more closely with Art Week Tokyo and Art Collaboration Kyoto (ACK). Sharing the news of the shift over Mori Bar’s signature martini earlier this week, Magnus Renfrew, the fair’s co-founder, told Observer that a venue change had been in the works for some time, but securing a space on those dates proved difficult. “Venues in Tokyo are incredibly challenging to find when you’re trying to organize something of this scale and ambition,” he said, adding that the feedback so far has been positive. “Everybody feels that being in Tokyo, and being there at a time when everything is happening simultaneously, is going to be a very powerful draw and generate a lot of attention.”

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Japan’s art market has been growing steadily even as neighboring markets have stalled. Following a 38 percent drop in 2020, it rebounded to $756 million in 2022 and has since stabilized. Sales reached $692 million in 2024, up 2 percent year over year, even as global sales declined by 12 percent, according to The Japanese Art Market 2025 report prepared by art-market economist Clare McAndrew as part of the FY2025 Art Ecosystem Infrastructure Development Promotion Project commissioned by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Since Tokyo Gendai launched in 2023, international galleries, including Pace and Ceysson & Bénétière, have opened spaces in Tokyo, while a new generation of Japanese galleries has helped expand the ecosystem in the capital and elsewhere, becoming increasingly visible at international fairs.

Long-established institutions such as the Mori Art Museum continue to demonstrate the strength of Japan’s top-level museum programming, but other local museums have also adopted a more international outlook, increasingly collaborating with institutions across the region. Last year, for example, a vast survey of recent decades of Japanese art, “Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010,” was jointly organized by the National Art Center, Tokyo (NACT) and M in Hong Kong, while the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) contributed to the production of the major Do Ho Suh survey now at MMCA Seoul, before it lands, slightly smaller, in Tokyo and and closes its tour at M . Meanwhile, in tandem with the fair, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT) is hosting an extensive Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibition featuring approximately 60 gelatin-silver photographs spanning his early work in the late 1970s through the present.

New private museums and collections have also opened in Tokyo and around the Japanese peninsula in recent years. Perhaps most impressive is the Ueshima Museum, which showcases the collection of Japanese entrepreneur Kankuro Ueshima. Ueshima began collecting in 2022 and opened his own museum just two years later. Today, the collection numbers more than 850 works, ranging from emerging Japanese artists to extremely recent acquisitions by internationally established names, including some works one might have previously encountered only at Art Basel, in Venice or in New York. Currently hanging in the museum, for example, is a monumental Nigel Cooke canvas from his exhibition at Fondazione Querini Stampalia, alongside works by Alicja Kwade and Raqib Shaw acquired directly from their most recent exhibitions in New York.

“The galleries, artists and cultural institutions shaping the market continuously produce world-class projects and programs, and Tokyo Gendai’s mission is to connect that energy with global audiences,” Renfrew said during a press conference. “The creativity emerging from Japan’s galleries, studios and institutions is what gives this fair its purpose, and it is a privilege to help bring the work to the air.”

Most importantly, he said, that connection doesn’t end when the fair doors close but drives new projects and collaborations throughout the year, resulting in longer-term cross-cultural exchange. One can see how this manifests in Mari Katayama, a photographer and performer whose work hangs in the VIP lounge and who has gained considerable momentum since the last Tokyo Gendai, where she presented with YKG. The exposure helped initiate what she described as a whirlwind year, now culminating in an upcoming museum presentation alongside Mariko Mori’s long-overdue and largest survey since 2003.

Looking at the broader context, Tokyo Gendai takes place in a Japan that has benefited from considerable political and economic stability, which has in turn contributed to collector confidence, according to director Eri Takane. At the same time, the Japanese art market is anchored by a collecting culture that has developed over decades and is driven more by passion than speculation, having already experienced the consequences of an earlier bubble. “We have had around 50 years of history in the gallery business in Japan,” she said. “I think the collectors are not really investors. They’re buying from passion.” That has helped insulate the market from the trend-driven bubbles seen elsewhere. “I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s not really trendy, like a bubble; it’s very stable.”

In a move toward greater accessibility and transparency, Tokyo Gendai introduced an online catalog this year that openly lists a price range for each work, helping generate early sales and holds before opening day. It’s likely a smart move as a younger generation of Japanese collectors is beginning to reshape the ecosystem, coinciding with a broader generational transfer within Japanese family businesses. As second-generation heirs assume greater responsibility and gain greater independence in decision-making, Takane expects their more international education and exposure to filter increasingly into their collecting and anticipates “some of those international tastes and other forms of exposure are going to start coming through.”

And rather than limiting themselves to acquiring art, some younger collectors are establishing communities, curatorial platforms and residency opportunities for artists and curators. According to Tokyo-based collector Yu Kimoto, older Japanese collectors often approach art as a long-term investment, but he and his peers tend to be guided more by curiosity and enjoyment than financial calculation. “If it turns out to be valuable, that’s great,” he said in a recent interview with Observer. “If not, that’s totally fine.” He’s emblematic of a generation whose collecting has been shaped by relationships and research conducted online as much as in person, across art and design, street culture and other collectibles. As part of the Tokyo Gendai VIP program, Kimoto opened his newly renovated and elegantly curated Omotesando apartment to visitors, showcasing an outstanding collection of Isamu Noguchi’s Akari........

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