Before I knew all about the festivities taking place in Yokohama, my main focus for the ‘May the 4th be with you’ season (it’s no longer just a single day of celebrating one’s love of the sci-fi saga!) was just to visit a Star Wars art exhibition taking place in Tokyo.

Many Parco shopping centres in Japan have some kind of Star Wars related theme running through them at the moment but the one in Shibuya is holding a “Passion. Strength. Power” exhibition featuring a unique collection of work from about a dozen artists. Tokyo Fox was there on the opening day last Friday (26th April) to see what is in store for those visitors wanting some Star Wars action of sorts.

Located on the 4th floor, this exhibition runs until May 13th (11:00 am till 9:00 pm) and it will no doubt be a popular place, particularly on Star Wars Day itself. I’ll be otherwise engaged that weekend so didn’t waste any time in going to see this art project expressing the characters of the sci-fi franchise. Once I was done with all the various “May the 4th be with you” stuff in Yokohama, I took the train to Shibuya. On arrival I was pleasantly surprised to see a black 1:12 scale model of the Millennium Falcon (the artwork of Ryuichi Ohira) parked up outside the entrance to Parco.

It’s no real surprise that Darth Vader, as perhaps the most iconic character of the whole saga, is the figurehead for the promotion of this temporary exhibit. Hiroki Tsukuda’s fine painting is very prominent at the entrance to the museum. The entry fee was 1000 yen (£5.10/$6.38) and not something I thought about too much at the time as I really had no idea how big or small the museum was.

Having seen so many black and red posters of the Vader artwork, it was quite a surprise to see that the original painting was actually just a black and white one!

I can’ be too sure but I think these figures (below) were all wooden carvings, and such attention to detail did slightly remind me of my friend Oki’s vegetable carvings of such iconic characters and spaceships.

Maybe I should have included a visitor in the foreground of the following few paintings (below) as it would’ve given a better idea of how big they are. Reflective light seemed to be a theme running through some of these paintings.

The temporary museum was probably a little smaller than I expected, and unlikely to take up more than 10-15 minutes of your time although typically I still managed to be in the place for nearly half an hour. Paintings seemed to provide the majority of the content but there were also some more three-dimensional exhibits such as these two glorious-looking Vader and Stormtrooper helmets (below) designed by Tetsuya Nakamura.

This styrofoam stormtrooper bust (below) was also highly impressive.

Ever since I took on the Ewoks cartoon challenge a few years ago, I have had a much greater appreciation for these small, furry space teddy bears. The Admiral Ackbar head (below) looked the better one though for this particular style of craft.

That wasn’t the only Ewok artwork on show as there was a beautiful piece of art depicting a scene between Princess Leia and Wicket (below) from ‘Return of the Jedi‘ (1983)

It is only right to acknowledge all the participating artists so lets give credit here to Hebru Brantley, Nicolas Jullien, Stickymonger, Yoon Hyup, Julio Anaya Cabanding, James Jarvis, Daniel Arsham, Hajime Sorayama, Toki, Tetsuya Nakamura, Hiroki Tsukuda and Ryuichi Ohira.

There was of course the ubiquitous souvenir shop selling a limited range of goods relating to the pieces of artwork on display. I can’t remember the prices exactly but stickers cost about 550 yen, postcards were around 380 yen, posters were over 2000 yen, and there were even some specially designed Adidas Star Wars trainers for 30,000 yen! Tempted I was not. Besides, I’ve already got two pairs of Stormtrooper and Darth Vader ones which are sufficient enough whist also costing a fraction of what the market rate is nowadays.

It’s always interesting to see the Japanese take on such iconic characters and spaceships and one can expect to see a lot more when the Star Wars Celebration event returns to Japan next year after an absence of 16 years.

Bonus: Various Parco shopping malls around Japan are displaying various characters. Among others, they include Chewbacca in Sapporo, Rey in Sendai, R2-D2 and C-3PO in Urawa, Kylo Ren in Shizuoka, Darth Vader in Nagoya and Yoda in Ikebukuro. I stopped off to see the latter on my way home as I had to change trains at that station anyway. Worth taking a look, it probably wasn’t!

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