Current Special Exhibition

Shiseido Art House Exhibition
－ Dreaming of Edo －The Works of KOMURA Settai
Crafts for All of Us Selection 2026
－Living Beautifully: Room Decorations for the Four Seasons－

March 12（Thu） — June 27（Sat）, 2026

The Shiseido Art House will be holding an exhibition of the works of KOMURA Settai (1887 – 1940), an artist active in the Taisho (1912 – 1926) and early Showa (1926 – 1989) eras.
After graduating from the Japanese Painting Department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts), Settai worked in a variety of jobs, and gained high praise for his cover design of author IZUMI Kyōka’s Nihonbashi (Nihonbashi Bridge) in 1914.From 1918 to 1923, Settai was also a member of Shiseido’s newly established Design Department, where he was put in charge of Japanese-style design, which differed from the then-popular Western style that had become the mainstream in the company’s product designs of the time.Even after leaving the company, he maintained a deep connection as one of the creators of the Shiseido typeface, which is still used by the company to this day, and is the basis for Shiseido’s Japanese logotype.
Settai was also active as a leading figure in not only Japanese painting, but also across a diverse number of disciplines, including illustration, book design, stage art, and historical research for films. His most prolific works can be found in his illustrations, where he excelled at drawings set in the Edo period, establishing a refined and elegant monochromatic world of exceptional dignity.
Through this exhibition, we hope to introduce you to the world of KOMURA Settai, who painstakingly recreated through his lyrical brushwork the beautiful customs shown in lingering traces of the long-gone Edo period. This exhibition presents over 140 items of Settai’s works, including original illustrative artwork, rough sketches of stage settings, prints, bound books, and other pieces created during his tenure at Shiseido.
While visiting the Shiseido Art House, we hope you will also take the time to view our concurrently running Crafts for All of Us Selection 2026 — Living Beautifully: Room Decorations for the Four Seasons, which has been carefully reconstructed with select works from the Crafts for All of Us series of exhibitions held at the Shiseido Art House museum from 2015 to 2023.

■Exhibition Information

• Entry Fee:
• None

• Hours:
• 10AM-4:30PM (last entry at 4:00PM)

• Holidays:
• Closed Sunday to Wednesday

• (Note 1)
• The KOMURA Settai: Dreaming of Edo exhibition will undergo partial changes to its exhibits in early May.

• (Note 2)
• Owing to such variables as the condition of the work, certain pieces scheduled for exhibition may not be available for viewing.

■Selected Works for Reference