In Japan, a hip new crowd is driving the art market 

Yusaku Maezawa is chiefly known within the art world for spending a record-shattering USD 110 million on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 painting of a skull. His track record as an art collector has inspired others to follow his lead; this group of art buyers, mostly entrepreneurs in their 30s and 40s, are called the ‘Maezawa children.’A year after that monumental acquisition, in 2018, the billionaire entrepreneur followed through with an announcement that he would head to outer space with eight artists on a SpaceX Starship, in what would be the first private flight around the moon. That plan to travel beyond earth’s exosphere was scrapped this year due to delays in the Starship program.Call it a grounding of stratospheric proportions.Maezawa and a handful of names aside, Japanese collectors have been largely absent in the constellation of major global art transactions. Anecdotally, Japan is said to represent less than 2% of the contemporary art market, a peculiar phenomenon considering the country ranks fourth by nominal GDP.To make matters worse – though in line with global art sales – numerous Tokyo- and Kyoto-based gallerists say the majority of art buyers in Japan have been tapping the brakes over the past 12 months or so.‘Sales have slightly declined compared to last year. I assume the declining economy explains it, but unlike the period following the Lehman shock [the 2008 global financial crisis], works by in-demand artists are still selling,’ says Takayuki Ishii, the founder of Taka Ishii Gallery. ‘The primary market remains strong, while the secondary market has become quite challenging. This is probably because there are fewer buyers who are willing to pay high prices even for desirable works in the secondary market.’Even so, findings from The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024 suggest Japan will be a high-growth region for the art market, and that high-net-worth individuals in Japan are increasingly willing to explore new artists in conjunction with purchasing familiar works. It is now up to commercial galleries to help prospective buyers form those connections.Tim Blum, who runs BLUM in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and New York City, says those in their 40s and 50s are the most active in Japan, although younger buyers also appear to be entering the market. Ishii observes a growing cohort of millennial and Gen Z collectors, many of whom have made their fortunes in the tech sector. As he puts it: ‘Those actively participating in the market are people who set up IT companies with buyouts of billions or tens of billions [in yen], or who can secure money from banks by taking their companies and leveraging their stocks.’These buyers have been venturing back into buying art from abroad despite the yen falling to its weakest level against the US dollar since the 1980s. Japanese collectors are beginning to see more value in acquiring art from overseas, according to Kayoko Yuki, founder of KAYOKOYUKI, a gallery loca