Shinjuku Modern

The Sompo Museum of Art in Tokyo will open in early 2026 with an exhibition that places the Shinjuku District at the center as a crucial crossroads for modern Japanese art. From January 10 to February 15, the exhibition Shinjuku: the City of Modern Art will be on view, marking the first attempt by a museum in the area to retrace the trajectory of artists who lived and worked in this part of the capital. The show spans about half a century of history, from the final years of the Meiji era through the heart of the twentieth century, featuring works by figures such as Nakamura Tsune, Saeki Yuzo, Matsumoto Shunsuke, and Miyawaki Aiko. Shinjuku, today known as one of the most vibrant centers of Tokyo’s urban and cultural life, was already at the beginning of the twentieth century a meeting point for painters and intellectuals. The artists who settled there attracted others in turn, creating a lively community that transformed the district into a laboratory of modernity. The exhibition seeks to tell this story by highlighting works that best express the shifts in language, sensibility, and themes explored by different generations. Paintings that portray urban scenes, intimate atmospheres, inner landscapes, and images of everyday life are displayed alongside testimonies of an aesthetic search shaped by modernization, Western influences, and the social transformations of Japan. Through an installation that intertwines biographies and historical context, the museum aims to reveal the connections between artists and the urban fabric, restoring the cultural density of Shinjuku as a cradle of Japanese modernity. Shinjuku: the City of Modern Art goes beyond documenting a chapter in art history, offering a broader reflection on the role of place in the formation of artistic identities, showing how a single neighborhood can become a generator of language and a reference point for an entire era.