The View From is excerpted from The Asia Pivot, Artnet Pro’s biweekly members-only newsletter providing mission-critical analysis, insights, and exclusive intelligence on developments in Asia’s art markets, with a focus on business opportunities and challenges. Subscribe here to receive it directly to your inbox.

Atsuko Ninagawa is the owner and director of the Tokyo-based gallery Take Ninagawa and the co-founder of Art Week Tokyo, which runs through Sunday. She is a member of Art Basel’s selection committee for its Basel edition.

Since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, Japan has indeed attracted a great deal of international attention. The number of international travelers to Japan reached 3.3 million in July, a 41.9-percent increase year-on-year and a historical high. I think it’s a testimony to the global appeal of Japanese culture and the country’s unrivaled hospitality industry—and with the weak yen over the past year or so it all comes at a steep discount compared to other destinations.

In that sense we launched Art Week Tokyo at a good time. At first, nobody understood what I wanted to do, nor did anyone really grasp the potential of the art week format. You have buses connecting some 50 galleries and museums, so what? But we have established an infrastructure that connects people with information about the local art scene and brings them to the places where art is happening in Tokyo. One of the greatest hurdles for international visitors was the lack of accessible information. We spend a lot of resources to help galleries and institutions to improve their messaging so that they can introduce the artworks in a more effective way.

The Art Week Tokyo bus that has been bussing VIPs around during the even that ran from November 2 to 6, 2022, including the first day of VIP. Photo: Vivienne Chow.

Another key principle of Art Week Tokyo’s vision for fostering the local art ecosystem is that the drawing power of Tokyo’s established galleries should contribute to showcasing the next generation of galleries. When the established galleries invite international clients they meet at events such as Art Basel in Basel to come to Art Week Tokyo, they are in a sense sharing resources with younger participating galleries that cannot afford to exhibit at these international fairs. International collectors have bought works from the younger galleries during their visits, and they were very happy to encounter new artists. Now, I feel that the members of the local art scene, particularly our peers from the primary sector, are starting to understand how they can use Art Week Tokyo as a platform.

Since our launch, the visibility of Tokyo’s art scene and Japanese artists has significantly improved, and this year’s edition of Art Week Tokyo features an incredible lineup of exhibitions that covers everything from global stars like Yoshitomo Nara to legendary historical figures like Keiichi Tanaami and a spotlight on female artists including Rei Naito, Tabaimo, and Aya Takano.

It’s also important to remind the world that Japan has a very long history of collecting modern and contemporary art that goes back to the start of the 20th century. There were of course huge collectors in the 1970s and ’80s, and many of them were serious collectors who were buying art they believed in—everything from Marcel Duchamp to Keith Haring. But after the bubble economy crashed in the early 1990s the market cooled down. That was the time when I started studying art. While in school my first interest was building a non-profit organization for art, but I wanted to work independently, so I started my own commercial gallery in 2008.

At the launch of AWT Focus, Art Week Tokyo 2023’s new curated sales platform, from left to right: Kenjiro Hosaka, director of Shiga Museum of Art, Otsu, and the inaugural curator of AWT Focus; Atsuko Ninagawa, cofounder and director of Art Week Tokyo; Vincenzo de Bellis, director, fairs and exhibition platforms, Art Basel. Photo: Vivienne Chow.

In the mid-2010s, the market slowly came back, with a young generation and new types of collectors entering the market. But because the lineage of art collecting was cut off in the 1990s, it was like we were starting all over again from scratch.

After several generations of dealers, we now have a strong, homegrown gallery scene in Tokyo, and that cohesiveness is one of the reasons for Art Week Tokyo’s success. Even the multinational galleries that have spaces here, like Blum, Fergus McCaffrey, and Perrotin, are quite invested in the local community and culture. We’ll see what happens as more international galleries seek to expand their presence in Japan. Many of them seem to be attracted to Japanese painters from a younger generation who are still relatively unknown even within Japan itself. I suppose it gives the galleries more room to introduce the artists to a broader audience. In the meantime, after the pandemic I think many Japanese gallerists and institutions are keen to continue strengthening their networks in Asia and participate actively in the regional art scene.

The Japanese government’s commitment to the contemporary art scene has been completely transformed in recent years under the leadership of Yasuta Hayashi, the director of the arts and culture division of Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. He visited all of the art spaces in Japan, not just the ones focused on contemporary art, and he engaged with all of the art players in the country. He spent all this time helping us to lay the foundation of a new art scene.

In return, we hope to expand our programs beyond the art world to enrich this cultural ecosystem. This year, we are working with the Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima to organize an architecture tour to visit historically significant buildings. Programs like this help to raise awareness about preservation in society, so that we can find a way to protect our cultural heritage while also thinking about how to build a better system for the future.

—as told to Vivienne Chow

This article was originally published in The Asia Pivot on October 2.