A fan tribute · 美術家 · Artist
The painter who turns folding screens, cardboard, and a wicked sense of humor into a mirror for modern Japan, and makes us look twice.
Born in Niigata in 1965, trained in oil painting at Tokyo University of the Arts, and celebrated in a landmark Mori Art Museum retrospective, AIDA Makoto has spent more than three decades making some of the boldest, funniest, and most thought-provoking art in Japan.123 This page is our love letter to that work.
Six reasons we keep coming back.
Folding screens, sliding-door panels, mineral pigments, ink-style mountain landscapes: Aida borrows the grand old forms and fills them with the present day. In his words, he prefers “starting with a preexisting form or work, and mixing that premise with my impressions of contemporary society to reconstitute a new image.”52
He calls himself “a kind of Pierrot,” and the humor is the hook.5 A cardboard castle, a rice-ball-headed statue, a formal protest statement from a humble pickle: the jokes land first, and the questions about Japan arrive right behind them.62
Painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance, installation, manga, novels, essays, even urban planning. His gallery’s own summary of his practice reads like a whole art school, and he does all of it.724
Ash Color Mountains is 3 by 7 meters. Electric Poles, Crows and Others spans 10.2 meters of folding screens. His Japanese MATSURI monument stands 7.2 meters high.2 Some of his paintings take years to finish.8
His gallery puts it plainly: “there are no other contemporary artist who is so dedicated to the theme of Japan like Aida.”9 His own X bio calls him 困ったくらいの愛国者, which we’d translate as “a patriot, almost to a fault.”10
Since 2008 his 21st Century Cardboard Guild workshops have invited volunteers of any skill level to build cardboard monuments with him, at art colleges, museums, and the Mori Art Museum.28 Of younger artists he has said, “We feed off of each other as an exchange.”8
Newest first. Highlights only; his full CV lives on the Mizuma Art Gallery page.
A two-person exhibition with artist OKADA Hiroko at Museum Haus Kasuya in Yokosuka (30 May to 16 August), with an open-studio production session and an artist talk whose registration closed early due to high demand.1112 Then THE SCRAPBOOK exhibition at Morioka Shoten, Ginza (30 June to 5 July).13
MONUMENT FOR NOTHING ~ Red TORII Gate, created for the inaugural exhibition of the Tadao Ando–designed Naoshima New Museum of Art, which opened 31 May 2025.142 Kodansha publishes 会田誠のスクラップブック (AIDA Makoto THE SCRAPBOOK), a 240-page A4 monograph with 750 images and 65,000 characters of his own commentary (2 June).15
His first solo show in five years at Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo (7 July to 28 August), originally planned to open alongside the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.9 The same year, Tokyo Castle, made of cardboard and blue tarpaulin, rose on the Ginkgo Avenue at Meiji Jingu Gaien for Pavilion Tokyo 2021.2
Solo exhibition at the Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art in his home prefecture.2
Niigata City presents him the 8th Ango Award (安吾賞), named for the Niigata-connected writer Sakaguchi Ango, at a ceremony on 16 January where he performed a live painting.41718 Later that year: the solo show Le Non-penseur (The Non-Thinker) at the Château des ducs de Bretagne in Nantes, France, and Sophie Calle / Makoto Aida at Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong.2
His first solo museum exhibition: about 100 works spanning two decades, curated by Kataoka Mami, 17 November 2012 to 31 March 2013.319 Its Japanese title, 天才でごめんなさい, roughly means “sorry for being a genius,” a playful nod to how often critics had called him one.720 Niigata City reports it drew about 490,000 visitors.4
Shown in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty of Distance.2
The two-artist show Art de Sauro with YAMAGUCHI Akira.2
Part of the 25th Bienal de São Paulo, and of Coloriage at the Fondation Cartier, Paris.2
A solo show titled after his celebrated series of folding-screen paintings, at Gallery Natsuka, Tokyo.2
Pictures don’t need to be not square, Yanaka Furufuru, Tokyo, the earliest solo exhibition on his CV.2
4 October 1965, Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture.1
We don’t reproduce his artwork here. It belongs to him and his collectors. Follow the links to see official images on his gallery’s page.
A monumental red torii built from the images of Japan’s last three decades, themed on the question “How Japan has been/is being transformed?” The museum says it carries the artist’s “hope for any form of rebirth.” Photography of this work isn’t permitted, so you have to go and see it for yourself.1421
Naoshima New Museum of Art →From across the room: a misty mountain range worthy of a classical ink painting. Up close, the peaks turn out to be heaps of salarymen in suits and ties, with their briefcases. Painted during his residency in Beijing, it’s a breathtaking, bittersweet portrait of work culture.620
View at Mizuma Art Gallery →History painting, reinvented. A Picture of an Air-Raid on New York City (1996) sends CG Zero fighters over the city on a six-panel screen built from newspaper and hologram paper. Beautiful Flag (1995) is now in the collection of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.2 The Mori retrospective showed the entire series together in one room.5
View at Mizuma Art Gallery →Rodin’s Thinker meets a Buddhist statue, with a giant rice ball for a head, meditating serenely on a golden heap of dung and doing absolutely nothing.6 He is “Onigiri Kamen (riceball-mask man),” the character Aida created in 2001 as his “ideal alter ego.”16 Our favorite hero.
View at Mizuma Art Gallery →A towering paper-and-wire ghost of an Imperial Army soldier, remembering the troops who went hungry for lack of supplies. It was built with the materials and methods of Aomori’s Nebuta festival floats, and it filled Mizuma Art Gallery in 2021.9
Exhibition page →A traditional castle made of cardboard boxes, first set up near Shinjuku Station, where many homeless people lived in cardboard homes. It is social commentary and pure “nonsense humor” at once.6 In his words, “a human being (or a nation) should keep having a sense of humor even in the hardest time.”6 Tokyo Castle brought the idea back to Meiji Jingu Gaien in 2021.2
View at Mizuma Art Gallery →Pickled plums, painted with devotion: a series of homages to Takahashi Yuichi’s Tofu (1877), which Aida calls “the first and finest oil painting in Japan.” It is a return to the roots of Japanese oil painting, and an irresistibly delicious one.9
Exhibition page →Crows on power lines across ten meters of screens, a haunting vision of what might remain after a catastrophe.6 It is now part of the Mori Art Museum’s collection.2
View at Mizuma Art Gallery →As listed by Mizuma Art Gallery.2
Real quotes only, each linked to where he said it.
“I’m a kind of Pierrot. I make people upset, I make them laugh, I annoy them, and that’s what I’m good at.”
“My first target audience is Japan.”
“I’m also part of the society I am responding to in my work.”
“You have to wait. And when the right thing comes you know. It just falls on you…”
“I think a human being (or a nation) should keep having a sense of humor even in the hardest time.”
“I decided to become an artist when I was 16 years old.”
“I do have a very strong desire for people to look at my artworks, though.”
“This ‘Onigiri Kamen (riceball-mask man)’ is a character I created in 2001 as my ideal alter ego.”
「美術家。困ったくらいの愛国者。」“Artist. A patriot, almost to a fault.” (our translation)
「初の受賞が安吾賞というのは嬉しい限りです。」“I’m truly delighted that my first award is the Ango Award.” (our translation)
Naoshima, Kagawa. Red TORII Gate was listed in Gallery 3 (B2F) in the museum’s April 2026 update, remaining “until the updates scheduled for winter.” Photography of this work isn’t allowed. Check before you go.
benesse-artsite.jp → His galleryTokyo. His representing gallery, home of his official CV and the best place to see images of his work.
mizuma-art.co.jp → FollowHis own account, in Japanese, followed by more than 100,000 people.
x.com/makotoaida → ReadKodansha’s definitive monograph (2025): 750 images, plus his own commentary.
kodansha.co.jp → ArchiveThe archived site of the 2012–13 retrospective. The museum’s collection includes Electric Poles, Crows and Others.
mori.art.museum →Sources for this section:232124210153 Collection works rotate, so a museum that owns a piece may not have it on the wall. Always check the museum’s current listings.
Every numbered link on this page points here and straight to the original. Links checked September 28, 2026. Identity: AIDA Makoto, 会田誠, Wikidata Q2596176.