Ainu and contemporary artists set works across the hot spring town in Hokkaido for AKAN AINU ART WEEK 2026

A gallery with no walls at Lake Akan

Loftwork is presenting AKAN AINU ART WEEK 2026 (AAAW 2026) in Lake Akan (in Japanese, “Akanko”), Hokkaido, from October 8 (Thu) to October 31 (Sat), 2026. Commissioned by Hokkaido’s Kushiro City, the event takes place across Lake Akan Onsen and the Akanko Ainu Kotan area.

For about three weeks, artwork will be scattered across the hot spring town and Lake Akan Ainu Kotan. “Kotan” means village or settlement in the Ainu language. Ainu artists based in Lake Akan Ainu Kotan will share the stage with contemporary artists from a wide range of backgrounds. This third year, the two groups have created large-scale pieces together, and those pieces will join the lineup. Visitors will walk around Lake Akan as the autumn colors arrive, meeting art, the wilderness and Ainu culture over the three weeks.

For decades, people in the Lake Akan Onsen area have shared their culture with the wider world. Lake Akan Ainu Theater IKor stages Ainu performances, and every year since 1950 the community has held the Marimo Festival, a three-day ceremony honoring the rare algae balls that grow in the lake. Through it all, residents have kept their traditions alive while building lasting exchanges with visitors from outside the region.

Kushiro City and Loftwork launched Akan Ainu Art Week in 2024 to add contemporary art to that history. Each edition welcomes artists from elsewhere in Japan and overseas, introduces them to the culture and asks them to work together with artists who live there. Those relationships have deepened year by year. They now carry the festival, and local artists keep passing their culture on and extending it.

The third edition adds something the festival has not tried before. Ainu artists and contemporary artists have created a symbolic large-scale installation for the hot spring town and the kotan. First-time visitors and people who know little about art will be able to walk the whole area and come across the works along the way.

Lake Akan Ainu Kotan is one of the largest kotan, or Ainu settlements, in Hokkaido, and about 120 people live there. Residents carve wood, sew cloth and offer prayers, and they hold to the Ainu belief that a spirit dwells in everything in nature. Travelers from across Hokkaido and beyond come for the rare chance to meet wilderness and Ainu culture in one place.

Most people hear “Hokkaido’s wilderness” and picture a remote corner of the country. Lake Akan is not such a place. A flight from Haneda Airport in Tokyo to Kushiro Airport takes about an hour and a half, and the drive from the airport takes another hour. Add those up and travelers reach the shore of a caldera lake in about two and a half hours. Japan protects the marimo that grow in its waters as a Special Natural Monument.

Drive out from the airport and pasture and forest open up on both sides. Eastern Hokkaido looks like this. Old-growth forest then appears under Mount Oakan and Mount Meakan, and steam rises from the hot spring town. October brings the earliest autumn colors in Hokkaido, and the lake reflects them. No other month shows the area at its fullest. Snow has not arrived yet, the roads stay easy, and travelers take their time along the lakeshore by rental car.

Visitors do more than see the art. They soak in the onsen, or hot spring baths, of Lake Akan Onsen, walk the lakeshore in the morning mist and ride the sightseeing boat out to the marimo colonies. Lake Akan sits close by, and still feels farther from daily life than almost anywhere.

Loftwork has announced the participating artists, details of the large-scale installation, related programs during the run and suggested touring routes in a second release. The official website and official Instagram account will carry the latest information as the opening approaches.

Since the first edition in 2024, 25 artists and groups have taken part. Among them is KOM_I, the singer and artist who fronted the music unit Wednesday Campanella until 2021. The festival has staged a collaboration between a contemporary artist and a player of the tonkori, a five-stringed Ainu instrument. Embroidery and silkscreen workshops drew participants from children to adults. “urar suye,” a short film produced under the same project, won the top prize in the travel movie category at the Japan World Tourism Film Festival 2025.

The archive site covers the past two years. The official 2026 website is now live.

※ Detailed information will be updated regularly on our official website and Instagram.