THE S.H.A.

Just because something is not on view does not mean it does not exist.

The Shibuya Higashi Archives is a museum that appears on no map. Its galleries live inside this app.

Within a space of deep black, a folding screen of the Rinpa school turns slowly along the inner wall of a cylinder, and within it forty-eight hiragana drift in the opposite direction, endlessly. Touch a single character, and that character takes the lead, as onomatopoeia emerge from within the screen.

The Jirinpa exhibition is not an exhibition for reading Japanese. It is an exhibition for entering the forms of Japanese, for touching its sounds, for regarding its presence. A hiragana is a shape before it is a sign; an onomatopoeia is a sound that resounds within the body before it is a meaning.

— The Galleries —

A cylindrical gallery. The folding screen circles the whole, seamless, and turns slowly.

Forty-eight hiragana. They turn quietly in a ring, and the one you touch draws near, taking the lead.

Words rise into being. With the chosen character as their first letter, the words held here emerge from the depths of the screen.

You draw close to the work. In close view, down to the fine detail of the screen and the silence of the gold ground.

— On Viewing —

The first room, which holds Amusements at Higashiyama in Kyoto, stays open to everyone, always, with no admission ticket to acquire.

The remaining rooms open with the all-rooms admission ticket, or with a Friends membership. The special exhibitions open, for each run, with a single-exhibition admission, or with a Friends membership. With a Friends membership, in a monthly or annual rhythm, you may move through every exhibition of the Archives.

Beginning with the permanent exhibition, the Jirinpa exhibition, we will continue to hold special exhibitions at regular intervals.

Please take your time, and view at your leisure.