Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition GIFU

Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition GIFU is a digital art exhibition at the Gifu City Museum of History. Prints by the great names of ukiyo-e are animated in 3DCG and projected onto the walls, so visitors walk through the scenes instead of looking at them in frames. The Gifu showing is a special exhibition marking the museum's reopening after its renewal and the 145th anniversary of the Gifu Shimbun newspaper.

Highlights

More than 300 works feed the projections. They come from Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Utagawa Hiroshige, Kitagawa Utamaro, Toshusai Sharaku and Utagawa Kunisada. Projection mapping spreads them across several rooms, each built around its own theme in three-dimensional moving images.

Not everything is digital. Prints made in the Edo period hang next to modern reproductions, with panels on the history of ukiyo-e and on Edo-period culture. The ukiyo-e adviser to the exhibition is the writer Masumi Horiguchi. Visitors may take photos in kimono inside the venue.

The Gifu content

The Gifu venue has content of its own. Ukiyo-e showing the warlord Oda Nobunaga and ukai (鵜飼), river fishing with trained cormorants, are set in motion for this showing only. A separate display explains ukiyo-e with ties to Gifu.

Organizers

The exhibition is planned and produced by Hitohata, a company based in Nagoya, together with TV Aichi. In Gifu it is run by an executive committee of Gifu City, the Gifu Shimbun, Gifu Broadcasting, Hitohata and TV Aichi. The exhibition series won an Excellence Award in the project category of the CJPF Award 2025 and a Gold award at the MUSE Creative Awards 2026.