Why Did Yoichi Ochiai Make a Sushi Restaurant and an Eel Restaurant for an Art Exhibition?

On the main street of Kyobashi, surrounded by a highway overpass and tall buildings, a sushi restaurant and an eel restaurant suddenly appeared side by side, surprising workers in the area. The two restaurants are actually the site of an art exhibition by media artist Yoichi Ochiai, entitled “Divine Duality: Sushi, Null, and the Eel Dragon in Edo’s Cyclical Time and Space.” This seemingly odd title is expressed in the form of tanka, a Japanese poem of thirty-one syllables.

Behind the noren curtain of the sushi restaurant is a sushi bar that looks familiar to this neighborhood, with a number of Ochiai’s works on display. His continuous series of photographs of mackerel and tuna scales, taken since around 2018, fit perfectly behind the counter as if he had planned to hang them there all along. His new work, “Sacred Object of Null,” is enshrined up high near the ceiling.

Walking through the noren curtain of the other exhibition area, visitors are transported back in time to the storefront of an Edo-era eel restaurant. Beyond the eaves sits the huge “Eel Dragon.” How on earth did Ochiai come up with such a work of art?

Many might think that Yoichi Ochiai is a tech-driven artist. However, his recent projects often involve traditional local arts and crafts. “Science is research, technology is research, and art is also research.” Ochiai believes they share the same essence. His fundamental theme is the prospected world of “Digital Nature,” and his creations are based on “how the world looks” around it. After receiving an offer from Tokyo Tatemono to hold this exhibition at BAG (Brillia Art Gallery), he immediately began his research of the YNK area (Yaesu, Nihonbashi, and Kyobashi).

“The Edo period is seemingly well known but surprisingly little known, and although it seems to have left some traces, they have remained barely touched,” says Ochiai, who found that many such vestiges still survive in the YNK area. His extensive research included making sushi, observing broomstick making, interviewing firefighters, and traveling far in search of relics from the Edo period.

He came to realize that being the birthplace of sushi, eel, and other Edo cuisine restaurants means a lot. Another important essence was the culture of woodworking, including bamboo crafts. Ochiai also recalled his own woodwork projects he collaborated on with craftspeople from Karimoku Furniture and Hida Takayama.

This is how his idea of creating a realistic sushi restaurant and an eel restaurant to display his artworks, including woodworking, emerged. It eventually evolved into an exhibition of diverse works, such as two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces, as well as those with visual devices.

His original idea was different from the sushi and eel restaurants. Following his Buddhism theme in 2023, his initial theme was the religious space of Edo and the deities of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism.


Through his research, he learned that in this area, large floats for the Nihonbashi Hie Shrine festival used to be topped by a giant statue nearly two meters tall (there used to be dozens of such statues). Ochiai came up with the idea to recreate it. A wide variety of statues, including kirin (or qilin, a mythical creature of China), had adorned the floats. However, a kirin statue already existed on Nihonbashi Bridge, so he continued his quest focusing on Hie Shrine. When he came across a picture of Ryujin (a dragon god), he thought, “This is it!” Unsatisfied with simply making a dragon, he asked himself, “What if an eel were a dragon?” Thus was born the idea of the Eel Dragon.

Upon further research, he found that in the Meiji period (1868-1912), a Ryujin statue used for a festival float in the Edo period had been transferred to Sakanamachi in Sakura City, Chiba Prefecture, so he made a visit there to see it. Referencing the statue, he created “Eel Dragon”—imagining that the dragon on the head of the Ryujin figure had grown even larger to the present day, with eight heads and eight tails. The figure wears VR goggles as a modern adaptation. Despite its large size, it is made of wood thanks to the cooperation of Karimoku.

Then something even more amazing happened. After establishing a close relationship with Sakanamachi through this research, the town agreed to lend out the figure’s costume to this exhibition. Although only in costume, it would revisit its old home of Edo after 145 years. In this way, the details of the exhibition were gradually being sorted. However, Ochiai also wanted to express the cycle of day and night that had been repeated since the Edo period up to this day.
“I used to make tea rooms to embody it, but what if I made a sushi restaurant and an eel restaurant?” This is how his final idea took shape.

The other of the two exhibition areas, the sushi restaurant, enshrines “null,” a frequent theme of Ochiai’s work. “Null” is a concept that is often used in computer science. A computer program is “born from a null state and returns to null.” Ochiai often compares this to a concept of Heart Sutra, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Then what should the sacred object of worship be?

A typical sacred object enshrined at Shinto shrines is a mirror. Ochiai decided to make a mirror rimmed with triangles, with designs of deities and animals, which are often unearthed from ancient burial mounds. One of its characteristics is the relief carved around the hole to pass a cord through. However, the concept of “null”—in other words, “nothingness”—proved to be difficult to achieve with Shinto ideas alone, necessitating the integration of the Buddhist concept of “emptiness.” Developing modern Buddhist elements as a part of Shinto-Buddhist syncretism, Ochiai eventually conceived the idea of a mirror rimmed with triangles, designed with one Buddha, five sweetfish, and eight eels.

The “null” concept is Ochiai’s favorite, and its first embodiment was in 2022 when he exhibited “Sunbeam of null in forest” in Otemachi Forest. It was also a project with Tokyo Tatemono, and Ochiai sees this as something special.

Set in a sushi restaurant and an eel restaurant, this exhibition also reflects Ochiai’s awareness of local and global issues.

In terms of local issues, art used to be deeply rooted in everyday life in Japan, with hanging scrolls and ikebana art, but nowadays, only a few people maintain such practices. They do not appear in pop culture, such as on YouTube and TV programs, making art a distant concept. Meanwhile, one of the goals of this exhibition was to demonstrate that art can surprisingly fit into a sushi restaurant or an eel restaurant.

As for global issues, he feels that despite the popularity of Japanese food culture and the visibility of Japanese artworks, their connection to contemporary Japan over the past several hundred years has hardly been communicated.
Ochiai believes that the sushi restaurant is a great way to showcase the two issues, and seems quite pleased with how the exhibition turned out.

The relationship in art between Yoichi Ochiai and Tokyo Tatemono began with the media artwork, “Sunbeam of null in forest” established within Otemachi Tower in 2022. Yoichi Ochiai’s installation piece, “Liquid Universe: A Journey through Dojima’s Digital Nature,” which embodies his concept of Digital Nature, is currently on display at the Brillia Tower Dojima condominium, a recently completed luxury hotel in Dojima, Osaka. The installation is sure to contribute to the rich lifestyle of the residents.

(Exhibition Outline)
• Exhibition Name: Yoichi Ochiai Solo Exhibition "Divine Duality: Sushi, Null, and the Eel Dragon in Edo's Cyclical Time and Space"
• Duration: Saturday, September 7, 2024 - Sunday, October 27, 2024
• Opening Hours: 11:00 AM - 7:00 PM (Closed on Mondays)
o Note: If Monday is a holiday, the gallery will be open and closed the following day.
• Venue: BAG-Brillia Art Gallery- 3-6-18 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0031, Tokyo Tatemono Kyobashi Building
• Organizer: Tokyo Tatemono Co., Ltd.
• Planning and Supervision: Chokoku-No-Mori Art Foundation
• Sponsor: Karimoku Furniture Inc.
• Equipment Support & Technical Cooperation: Seibidou Co., Ltd.
• Management: Quoras Inc.
• Admission: Free

Text : Nobuyuki Hayashi
Photo: Takuya Yamauchi

Official website
https://www.brillia-art.com/bag/

DESIGNART TOKYO 2024　SPECIAL INTERVIEW | Yoichi Ochiai at BAG -Brillia Art Gallery-