Fusion of Pop Culture and Regional Culture: The Touring Art Festival Pop Over Musashino (POM) to be Held Next February in Tokorozawa City, Japan

Guests Include Gundam‘s Mechanical Designer Kunio Okawara, Animation Director Gō Nagai and Manga Artist Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

KADOKAWA CORPORATION has announced that they will be holding Pop Over Musashino (POM), a tour-style art festival focused on pop culture, in Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan from February 7th, 2025 (Fri.) to March 30th, 2025 (Sun.). This event has been commissioned by Japan Cultural Expo 2.0, a national project aimed at promoting the culture and art that embody Japan’s beauty and essence while also showcasing their diversity and universal appeal in preparation for Expo 2025 (in Osaka, Kansai).

The POM festival will be held at two locations: the Kadokawa Culture Museum, supervised in design by architect Kengo Kuma and located at TOKOROZAWA SAKURA TOWN, and the Tokorozawa Aviation Museum, which stands on the site of Japan’s first airfield. Each venue will feature different themes.]

At the first venue, the Kadokawa Culture Museum, a special exhibition will showcase new works by several emerging illustrators who are gaining attention on social media. The exhibition will focus on the region’s historical and cultural landscape, offering visual representations of Musashino’s nature, facilities, and daily life. The artworks will not only capture the region’s current state but also include elements designed to entice visitors to experience it in person.

The second venue, the Tokorozawa Aviation Museum, will host a contemporary art exhibition themed around the 1970s flying robot anime. Modern artists will present their interpretations through various methods, including sculpture, installation, video, and painting, inspired by classics such as Mazinger Z, Reideen the Brave, Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V, and Mobile Suit Gundam. Additionally, a special event featuring Kunio Okawara, the mechanical designer for GUNDAM, Gō Nagai, the author of Mazinger Z, and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, animation director and character designer for GUNDAM, is planned to be held at the Tokorozawa Civic Center Muse.

　One meaning of “pop over” is to casually stop by. The event hopes to attract visitors that will “pop over” to Musashino—a place where immigrants have been intermingling to develop new kinds of cultures since ancient times—to experience the thrilling overlap between pop culture and local culture.

■Event Overview

Dates: February 7th, 2025 (Fri.) to March 30th, 2025 (Sunday)
Venue 1: Illustrator Exhibition (Tentative Title) at the Kadokawa Culture Museum
Venue 2: Robot Exhibition (Tentative Title) at the TOKOROZAWA AVIATION MUSEUM
POM Festival Special Website: https://tokorozawa-sakuratown.com/special/pom/en

■Illustrator Exhibition (tentative name)

Closed days: Every Tuesday (Excluding Holidays)

Venue: Kadokawa Culture Museum 5F (in TOKOROZAWA SAKURA TOWN)

(Address : Kadokawa Culture Museum 5F, TOKOROZAWA SAKURA TOWN, 3-31-3 Higashitokorozawa, Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan 359-0023)

Website: https://kadcul.com/en
Co-sponsor : Kadokawa Culture Promotion Foundation
Planning and coordination: TWIN PLANET Co., LTD. and R11R Inc.　

Fee:
Advance tickets: 1,700 yen (including tax) *Sold online
Same-day tickets: 1,800 yen (including tax) *Sold at the venue
*Tickets will be available for purchase online starting on November 15th (https://tix.kadcul.com/). Tickets will also be sold at the venue on the day of the event.
*A 50% ticket discount will be offered to customers with a disability certificate, and up to one accompanying person, but only for purchases made at the venue on the event day.

Content:
The special exhibition will display works by dozens of emerging illustrators active in Japan, mainly through social media. These works are intended to give viewers achance to experience daily life in Musashino, as well as its nature and range of facilities.

Every piece of exhibited artwork will be set at a real-life location in Musashino. These illustrations are aimed to establish Musashino as a a site for pilgrimage. Its concept is not only to be visually enjoyable but also to enticeviewers to visit the actual location.

Note: Details on the participating artists, writers, and other creative professionals will be released in mid-November.

■Robot Exhibition (tentative name)

Closed days: Every Monday (Excluding Holidays, in which case the museum is closed on the next weekday)
Venue: Tokorozawa Aviation Museum
(Address: Tokorozawa Aviation Museum, Tokorozawa Aviation Memorial Park, 1-13 Namiki, Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan 359-0042)
Website: https://tam-web.jsf.or.jp/ *Japanese only
Co-sponsor: Tokorozawa Aviation Museum and TOKOROZAWA CULTURAL FOUNDATION

Fee:
Adults: 520 yen (including tax); elementary and middle school students: 100 yen (including tax)
*This is the admission fee for the Tokorozawa Aviation Museum Exhibition Hall. Tickets can only be purchased at the venue on the day of the event.
*Any person with a disability who presents their disability certificate will be admitted free of charge.

Content:
Tokorozawa, the home of Japan’s first airfield, is holding a contemporary art exhibition focused on the theme of anime (Japanese animation) featuring flying mecha (robots).

In the 1970s, as Japan’s high-growth period ended and left the country feeling a sense of stagnation, television transitioned from black and white to color, and many mecha anime series were created that dramatically portrayed the realities of war as opposed to simple stories about good versus evil. These shows experienced a boom in popularity outside of Japan as well, and—based on these 1970s works—5 guest artists will create an entirely new kind of contemporary art.

Regardless of whether you care for mecha anime, we hope you will take this opportunity to check out the inspiring works on display—courtesy of said artists—while looking back on Japan’s rich history of aviation, examples of which are peppered throughout the venue.

Cooperating Companies and Works *In chronological order
∙ Mazinger Z (1972–1974), Dynamic Planning Co., Ltd.
∙ Reideen the Brave (1975–1976), TOHOKUSHINSHA FILM CORPORATION
∙ Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V (1977–1978), TOEI COMPANY, LTD.
∙ Mobile Suit Gundam (1979–1980), Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc.

Artists Participating in Robot Exhibition (tentative name)
*In Japanese alphabetical order

Hiroto Ikeuchi
Hiroto Ikeuchi employs a bricolage approach to dismantle ready-made products and then reconstruct them in the form of artwork. By doing so, he essentially deconstructs the inherent meanings of things and then provides new value to viewers through their subjective experiences of his work. Most of his work derives its motif from mecha anime, other aspects of Japanese culture, and non-Japanese science fiction, and he is creating a modern image of retrofuturism that seems almost possible.

Miwa Komatsu
Thanks to the rich natural environment that has surrounded her ever since she was a child, Miwa Komatsu has had the opportunity to come in contact with various kinds of living things, and she has seen death up close, which has given her a unique view of life and death in general. Her work is focused on the ancient Japanese idea that there is a god for everything—and thus that everything has a soul—as well as mythical creatures appearing in legends from time immemorial. She fuses traditional Japanese culture with modern artistic sensibilities to express her distinctive views, advocate her Great Harmonization concept to the world at large, and deliver a message of prayer.

Hiroshi Fuji
Hiroshi Fuji made a scrapbook of frog characters when he was just four years old. Ever since he released Kamogawa Oyoida Koinobori (literally Carp Streamers Over Kamo River), his debut work, he has used frogs as a symbol to guide various projects. 2025 Kaeru no Ike Symposium (2025 Pond Symposium of the Frogs), a work he designed to model the global population increase, won the 2nd JAS grand prize. In 2000, he established the KAEKKO system throughout Japan to create a play area for children by using toys that are no longer played with. He currently lives with a mountain of broken toys.

Takayuki Yamamoto
Takayuki Yamamoto possesses an elementary-school teaching license, and—based on such experiences—this writer pursues the experience of learning something new through workshop-style activities conducted with children. He also participated in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (which was held in India in 2016) and acted as a learning curator for the Aichi Triennale (in 2022).

Kanji Yumisashi
Kanji Yumisashi’s works focus on the themes of suicide and mourning. In 2015, while he was studying as a member of the first class of the Genron Chaos* Lounge New Art School, his mother committed suicide after suffering the mental and physical effects of a car accident. According to him, he had a vision of a bird holding a golden ring before her funeral procession, and this appears as a key motif in many of his works. In 2018, he won a Toshiko Okamoto Award at the 21st Taro Okamoto Award for Contemporary Art Exhibition, and, in 2021, he won an Honorable Mention Award at VOCA Exhibition 2021.

Curator: Shingo Jinno (Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Chiba University / Director, Art Department, Kadokawa Culture Museum)

■ Special event for Robot Exhibition (tentative name)

A special event will be held at the MUSE TOKOROZAWA CIVIC CULTURAL CENTER MARQUEE HALL.
In addition to a talk session featuring legends from the mecha anime world, there will be a collaboration between a virtual pianist and mecha anime songs.

Appearances by *In Japanese alphabetical order
Guest: Kunio Okawara, Gō Nagai, and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Moderator: Shinichiro Inoue (Novelist, Editor, and Producer)
Performance: Nokuto Urune (Virtual pianist)

Who is Nokuto Urune?

Nokuto Urune is a virtual pianist who is supervised by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and debuted through portameta, a classical-music virtual artist project run by KADOKAWA CORPORATION and DWANGO Co., Ltd. Ever since debuting at Niconico Chokaigi, an event held in April 2024, Nokuto Urune has engaged in various streaming activities aimed at communicating what makes classical music and piano performances so appealing, especially on YouTube (https://www.YouTube.com/@UruneNokutoch). He also performed in real time alongside the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra at FESTA SUMMER MUZA KAWASAKI 2024, which was held in August 2024.
https://portameta.com/en/

Date: February 8th 2025 (Sat.)
Time: 14:00–15:30 (gates open at 13:00)
Ticket price: 2,500 yen (including tax)
Venue: MUSE TOKOROZAWA CIVIC CULTURAL CENTER MARQUEE HALL
(Address : 1-9-1 Namiki, Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture 359-0042)
Ticket sales: Tickets will go on sale starting in mid-November on the MUSE website (https://www.muse-tokorozawa.or.jp/).
*This event will be conducted in Japanese only.

■Organization
Organizer: KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Japan Arts Council Agency for Cultural Affairs, and Government of Japan
Outsourced to: 2024 Japan Cultural Expo 2.0 project (outsourced)
Supported by: Tokorozawa City and Saitama Prefecture

■About the Musashino-Kairo Project
The POM festival is held as part of the Musashino-Kairo Project. In terms of this project, Musashino refers to the wide area centered on TOKOROZAWA SAKURA TOWN from Saitama Prefecture to western Tokyo, and the goal of the project is for KADOKAWA—a general entertainment company—to contribute to regional development through culture and art. Throughout the year, various workshops and art events are held through this project to convey the rich history of Musashino, a place where immigrants have been intermingling to develop new kinds of cultures since ancient times.
https://www.instagram.com/musashino_kairo_pj/

■About KADOKAWA CORPORATION
KADOKAWA Group, a comprehensive entertainment company, develops a wide range of businesses such as Publication, Animation, Film, Gaming, Web services, and Education/EdTech. We discover talent globally, create diverse IP (Intellectual property), and deliver it through various media. We maximize the value of IP under our strategy “Global Media Mix with Technology” which refers to global rollouts of created IP by utilizing technology.
https://group.Kadokawa.co.jp/global/