CLEVELAND, OH.- Iconic contemporary artist Takashi Murakami is taking over Cleveland with his ambitious new exhibition, Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow. The exhibition features never-before-seen installations and exclusive new works, including pieces created to respond specifically to art in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s (CMA) renowned collections of historical Japanese, Indian, and European art.

Filled with paintings and sculptures that pulsate with color, sheen, and a vibrant energy, the exhibition reinterprets history through art, blending past and present with fresh perspectives. Through these qualities, the artist issues irresistible entry points into complex considerations of Japanese history and contemporary culture as they relate to our wider global society.

The exhibition opens with a stunning Yumedono in the CMA’s Ames Family Atrium. The full-scale re-creation of the “Dream Hall” from the Hōryūji Temple complex in Nara Prefecture, Japan, which houses four soaring paintings by Murakami.

Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow runs through Sunday, September 7, 2025, in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery. The exhibition is presented by Akron Children’s.



Exhibition Inspiration: Shared Historic Trauma

Much of the art presented in Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow can be seen in relation to three historic events: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during World War II; the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan; and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This exhibition takes its title from Murakami’s 2014 painting In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, language taken from director Akira Kurosawa’s film The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1952). The 82-foot-long work reflects on Japan’s 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the resulting Fukushima nuclear disaster there. The painting is part of a multiyear body of work that responded to the crisis. The series features images of Buddhist and Daoist figures who heroically intervene in large watery landscapes.

The works on view track a consistent but evolving thread in Murakami’s work of addressing the impact of trauma and disaster on individuals, as manifested not only through grief but also through an outpouring of creativity, religious fervor, and contemporary obsessions as diverse as gaming, the metaverse, trading cards, street fashion trends, anime, and manga. In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Murakami entered discussions about the metaverse and looked to our collective retreat into online spaces to survive and thrive amid the isolation.




“Murakami’s art mines global history to reimagine the present moment ,” said Emily Liebert, the CMA’s Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art. “Visitors to this exhibition will encounter the Takashi Murakami that they know and love—with his emphasis on popular culture, vibrant design, and collaborations—and they will have an opportunity to connect that work with the historical precedents from which it takes inspiration throughout the Cleveland Museum of Art’s encyclopedic permanent collection.”

Yumedono Dream Hall: Shōgun Collaboration

Murakami was inspired to incorporate an example of period architecture to house some of his paintings after viewing the 2024 award-winning television series Shōgun. Working with the series’s art director and production designer, Helen Jarvis, along with the Shōgun cocreators, Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, who introduced them, Murakami developed the Yumedono as an entrance to the exhibition.

“This is a transformative space,” said Jarvis. “Takashi visioned the re-creation of a sacred structure as a portal for the world of the ordinary into the hallucinogenic dream world of his art.”

“The Yumedono project is a staggering achievement, easily one of the most ambitious projects in the recent memory of contemporary art,” said the exhibition’s curator, Ed Schad, curator and publications manager at the Broad.

The original octagonal structure in Nara, Japan, is believed to occupy the same location as the home of Prince Shōtoku Taishi, who converted his father, Emperor Yōmei, to Buddhism in the late 500s CE by calling for the intercession of Buddha to cure the emperor of an illness. Upon the emperor’s recovery, Buddhism was allowed formally into Japan. The Nara Yumedono houses a seventh-century Buddhist statue depicting Prince Shōtoku, believed to heal people from suffering. Unique to the Cleveland exhibition, the re-created Yumedono serves as a physical and symbolic anchor for the show.




New Paintings

Displayed in the Yumedono are four new paintings, all created between 2023 and 2025. Blue Dragon Kyoto, Vermillion Bird Kyoto, White Tiger Kyoto, and Black Tortoise Kyoto emphasize Murakami’s recent fascination with the Japanese city Kyoto as a vital keeper of many of the country’s cultural traditions. Modeled after the ancient Chinese capital of Chang’an (now Xi’an), Japan’s former imperial capital Kyoto was similarly laid out along a north-south axis. In classical Chinese cosmology, which spread to Japan through Korea, a supernatural animal guards each of the cardinal directions—a black tortoise presides over the north, with a vermillion bird to the south, a blue dragon to the east, and a white tiger to the west. Here, Takashi Murakami reinterprets the traditional appearance of the animals in relation to the unique geography, architecture, and culture of Kyoto, wanting the paintings to evoke history while also serving as a bridge to the future. This engagement with Japanese culture is enhanced by the CMA’s Japanese art collection.

“In this collaboration, having the Yumedono at the entrance of the exhibition means that, first, visitors go way back in history and encounter the sense of life and death in that period in Japan,” said Murakami. “But once you enter the structure, you immediately encounter my paintings that are actually not very Japanese. They have symbols from China reflecting an even earlier history, about protecting a capital city. Then you go through this space into the exhibition, to trace the evolution of my works over time in this altered state of mind.”




Interventions Based on the CMA’s Permanent Collection

Over the course of the run of the exhibition, four new Murakami artworks, inspired by a recent visit to the CMA, are being placed in conversation with pieces in the CMA’s permanent collection galleries. Murakami used software to digitally deconstruct and then reconstruct each selected artwork, adding details that are notably different from the originals. From afar, Murakami’s works look like faithful copies of the originals; when viewed up close, visitors can see and recognize the discrepancies and are forced to adjust their mindset to the new works. Look for Murakami’s interventions installed in proximity to these original CMA objects over the ensuing months:

• Bowl Depicting Saint Francis Receiving Stigmata (located in gallery 118)
• Surya, the Sun God (located in gallery 237)
• The Dessert (located in gallery 223)
• Mount Sainte-Victoire (located in gallery 222)