A Sense of Movement: Japanese Sports Posters, co-presented by The Japan Foundation, Toronto and the DNP Foundation for Cultural Promotion, is an exhibition that explores the connection between Japanese graphic design and sports.

Prior to Toronto, the in-person presentations in Sydney (October 2021 – January 2022) and in Paris (December 2022 – March 2023) featured a selection of 31 posters by eight Japanese graphic designers. This exhibition then arrived in Toronto with an extended range of exhibits, a total of 68 pieces by 24 designers from young professionals who are currently active in the field to great masters who led the dawn of graphic design. The exhibition introduces the means by which these uniquely creative minds convey sport and its “sense of movement” through two-dimensional printed media.

This exhibition was planned and inspired by an online lecture by Eishi KITAZAWA, curator at Ginza Graphic Gallery’s “Conjuring a Sense of Movement: Japanese Graphic Designers & Sports Posters” organized by The Japan Foundation, London in September 2020. The exhibition was born online and has been growing in-person world-wide.

Here in this extended selection the compositional beauty, dynamism and humour expressed within these Japanese posters are communicated through the perspective of sports. You experience the fruit of Japan’s rich graphic design culture during the half century between the first Olympic Games in Japan and the present time.

Exhibitors: AOBA Masuteru, ASABA Katsumi, FUKUDA Shigeo, KAMEKURA Yūsaku, KASAI Kaoru, SATOH Taku, TANAKA Ikkō, UENISHI Yuri, YOKOO Tadanori, SANO Kenjirō, SOEDA Takayuki, NAGAI Hiroaki, WATANABE Yoshie, NODA Nagi, MATSUNAGA Shin, ISHIOKA Eiko, SAKAE Ryōta, HOSOYA Gan, KUBOTA Arata, KOSUGI Kōichi, HATTORI Kazunari, YOSHIDA Katsu, NODA Sayo (Hakuhōdō), GROOVISIONS