The Best Contemporary Art Museums in Japan

Japan’s art market is on the ascent, at least according to data: It grew 11 percent between 2019 and 2023 compared to 1 percent globally, according to a study commissioned by Japan’s Agency of Cultural Affairs in collaboration with Art Basel. I felt that momentum firsthand on my family’s recent visit, where it became clear that the nation’s long-standing craft traditions had laid the groundwork for the wave of contemporary art now coming into view. (Launched in 2021, Art Week Tokyo will host its fifth annual showcase this November.)

Serious investments in public spaces across the country underscore that cultural ambition. Pritzker Prize–winning architect Tadao Ando designed the Naoshima New Museum of Art, which opened last May, overlooking the remote atolls of the Seto Inland Sea. And set to open this month in Tokyo, MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives will house contemporary art alongside a rooftop garden of native Japanese plants. The building is entirely fringed by greenery and terraces, as well as a sixth-floor footbath where you can soak your toes in an onsen-like pool overlooking the skyline.

We began our own tour of Japanese art ogling in Atami, a beach town that sits nearly a two-hour drive south of Tokyo or just 30 minutes via the zippy Shinkansen, or bullet train. Perched on a cliff 885 feet above sea level overlooking the glimmering Pacific Ocean, MOA Museum of Art feels like Japan’s answer to the Getty. We accessed the galleries by first ascending a series of glowing escalators situated beneath an oculus dome animated by a projected kaleidoscope. The museum’s collection includes a reconstructed 16th-century gold tearoom and a bas-relief bronze by Antoine Bourdelle originally made for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. But the atrium’s glass and limestone architecture alone is worth the trip, as is a terrace overlooking Sagami Bay and a patisserie by Michelin-rated pastry chef Toshi Yoroizuka. Case in point: My cassis mousse cake at the cafe arrived studded with semidry figs and gold, perched on a lacquer plate by urushi master Murose Kazumi. Behind the museum’s main building, a 236,400-square-foot landscaped garden unfurls with plum orchards, azalea-covered hills, and a bamboo forest with trees so leggy and aromatic that standing there felt like being in an earthy cathedral.

Friends insisted we visit the newly expanded teamLab Planets, so back in Tokyo we schlepped through queues of tourists to enter the trippy immersive digital installation. At one point, we waded shoeless through shin-deep warm water; at another, we moved through a mirrored room filled with fluffy orbs that had a texture recalling the glutinous surface of mochi. Aside from the moss garden dotted with ovoid mirrors—which was transcendent—I found it completely underwhelming and overwhelming, like a thronged arena concert. Still, the appetite for the experience is undeniable; the collective opened a similarly glimmering location, teamLab Biovortex Kyoto, in 2025.

On a tip from photographer Matt Dutile that the city of Kanazawa on the west coast was Japan’s artisan capital, we boarded another bullet train and crossed the country in two and a half hours. (Book Shinkansen tickets early to nab reserved seats.) The seaside town is a mecca for Japan’s cool kids, with boutiques ranging from an outpost of perfumier Phaeton Fragrance House to Pippurikera, a Scandinavian design shop stocked with Finnish vintage finds like blown-glass mugs and enamel bowls from 1965. Ceramic shops are everywhere—Kanazawa is famed for its gold leaf and fine porcelain.

The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, is architecturally restrained and luminous, its circular structure ringed by glass walls exhibiting rising art stars such as Tsuno Seiran, a former psychiatric-hospital nurse whose chromatic resin dress-shaped pieces hover apart from the body as freestanding sculptures. Just across the street sits Kenrokuen, considered one Japan’s most beautiful gardens. We wandered amid 28 verdant acres dotted with ponds and streams, watching a great egret take flight from the water beside a teahouse built in 1774.

Our hotel, the 47-room Michelin Guide–listed Kumu Kanazawa, was a notch too hip for us parents; our room was so cramped and dark I felt like we were in art storage. Three things saved it for me: The loaner PJs stacked like envelopes in the gratis amenity area of the lobby; artwork on each floor, including The Fall by Atskui Takamoto, a ceiling-high tower of clear clothespins echoing the shape of a falling water droplet; and, at breakfast on New Year’s Day, a trio of sweet tsujiura—Edo-period fortunes full of good wishes for the year ahead. In life, as in art, it’s the smallest gestures that linger longest.