Overview
Chiyoda City Hibiya Library & Museum is marking its 15th anniversary with the Nara Ittobori Exhibition, held in collaboration with the Nara Craft Museum, an institution that carries on craft culture and communicates its appeal and new possibilities. The exhibition brings together around 40 works and tools by leading artists of Nara Ittobori.
Nara Ittobori, also known as Nara ningyo (Nara dolls), is one of Nara's representative traditional crafts. Deeply tied to festivals and Noh theater, it has developed over a thousand years into a distinctive art form defined by bold chisel marks and vividly colored painting that combine strength with elegance.
Dates and Venue
Period: December 19 (Sat), 2026 to January 17 (Sun), 2027
Hours:
- Monday to Thursday and Saturday: 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
- Friday: 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM
- Sunday and holidays: 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Closed: December 21 (Mon), 2026, and December 29 (Tue), 2026 to January 3 (Sun), 2027
Venue: Chiyoda City Hibiya Library & Museum
Admission: Free
Organizer: Chiyoda City Hibiya Library & Museum
Co-organizer: Nara Craft Museum
More information: https://www.library.chiyoda.tokyo.jp/hibiya/
Highlights
A thousand years of Nara craftsmanship, together in Tokyo — around 40 works and tools on display
The exhibition introduces the skill and beauty of Nara Ittobori as passed down in Nara, presenting roughly 40 items that include both finished works and the tools artists use to make them. Displaying the tools alongside the finished pieces offers a rare look at the process behind each work.
A hands-on corner is also available, where visitors can touch and feel the texture of the wood rather than only looking.
Inherited technique, new expression — contemporary Nara Ittobori artists
While preserving techniques passed down over generations, Nara Ittobori artists have continued to develop new forms of expression. The exhibition presents "The Twelve Zodiac Animals" by Araki Yoshindo alongside "African Zodiac Animals" by Maeda Hiroyuki. Both works take the zodiac as their subject, but one reflects the refined beauty of tradition while the other reimagines the animals through African motifs with a bold, free-spirited approach. The contrast between the two highlights both the technique Nara Ittobori has cultivated over its long history and the artists' efforts to push beyond it into new forms of expression.
Related Event
Lecture: "Exploring the Appeal of Nara Ittobori: Focusing on the Works of Morikawa Toen"
- Date: December 20 (Sun), 2026, 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM (doors open 1:30 PM)
- Speaker: Tsukimura Kino (Research Fellow, Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties)
- Venue: Chiyoda City Hibiya Library & Museum, 4th-floor Studio Plus (Small Hall)
- Fee: ¥1,000 (free for Chiyoda City residents; residents should bring ID showing their address)
- Organizer: Chiyoda City Hibiya Library & Museum
About the Nara Craft Museum
The Nara Craft Museum is a public facility in Nara City where visitors can learn about craft techniques passed down for more than 1,300 years in Nara, a place often considered the origin of Japanese traditional crafts. It exhibits and sells works by artists based in or connected to Nara, and also hosts craft-making experiences, demonstrations, and other events that let visitors engage directly with the crafts.
More information: https://nara-kogeikan.city.nara.nara.jp/
