42 days left#Sculpture & installation
Yasuhiro Suzuki, “Sumida Railway’s ‘Mitate Line’ Opens”
Japanese original:
鈴木康広「すみだ鉄道『見立て線』開通」
Yasuhiro Suzuki works by mitate, seeing one familiar thing as another; his best-known piece, Ship of Zipper, sailed back and forth on the Sumida River, its wake opening and closing like a zip. Here, at the Tobu Museum, which tells more than a century of Tobu Railway history, he makes work alongside the real cars and displays, in the museum's Mukojima Satellite area and inside the Nikko tramcar No. 203. Museum admission is charged separately.
Venue taking part: Sumida Art Festival · Higashi-Mukojima
- Dates
- Sep 4 – Dec 20, 2026
- Venue
- Tobu Museum (東武博物館) · Sumida
- Address
- 東京都墨田区東向島4-28-16Beside Higashi-Mukojima Station (Tobu Skytree Line): turn right out of the ticket gatesOpen in Google Maps
- Hours
- 10:00–16:30Closed: Mon
- Admission
- Adults ¥200 (Tobu Museum admission)Original: 大人 200円（東武博物館の入館料）
Visit planning
The calendar entry covers the whole run of the exhibition. Please check opening hours and closing days before your visit.
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Same genre · Sculpture & installation
Credits
- Artists
- Yasuhiro Suzuki
- Organized by
- 「墨田五彩藝術祭」執行委員會, Sumida City
Knowledge cards
Mitate見立てA way of expressing one thing by treating it as another, used in Japanese poetry, performance, gardens and pictures.Read moreClose
01About
Mitate means expressing something not directly but by pointing to something else, so that the first is treated as the second. Japanese poems, haikai verse and kabuki have all used it. In gardens, the patterns raked into white sand and pebbles in a dry-landscape garden (karesansui) are treated as the flow of water. A rakugo storyteller conjures a scene with only a fan and a hand towel, for instance treating a closed fan as a pipe or chopsticks. A picture that tells a classical story or tale through figures and settings of the artist’s own day is called mitate-e, and it is common in ukiyo-e. Itō Jakuchū’s Vegetable Nirvana treats vegetables as the Buddha’s passing into nirvana.
02In the gallery
Read the title and look at the shape, find the two things being compared, and think about where they match and where they differ.
Wall label terms in Japanese
- 見立て
- Mitate
- 見立絵
- Mitate-e
- 枯山水
- Karesansui (dry-landscape garden)
- 落語
- Rakugo
03Notes
In mitate, one thing is treated as another, and what matters is how the two overlap.
This time, at Sumida Railway’s ‘Mitate Line’ Opens —
What else does the shape you see remind you of?