Iwai Toshio

Born in 1962 in Aichi, Iwai Toshio started making experimental animations during college, and in 1985 became the youngest recipient of the Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan Awards for Time Stratum II, which was inspired by nineteenth-century animation devices like the phenakistiscope and zoetrope. He subsequently became a pioneering new media artist whose wide-ranging output includes the TV show Ugo Ugo Ruga, the Bouncing Totoro exhibit at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, the Nintendo DS game Electroplankton, and the Tenori-on electronic musical instrument made for Yamaha. Iwai won the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica for his 1996 performance with Sakamoto Ryuichi. He made his debut as a children’s book author in 2006. His bestselling series The House with 100 Stories has sold 4 million. In 2022, a comprehensive overview of his career, “Which One’s Which? Iwai Toshio: A Retrospective—A House of 100 Stories and Media Art”(2022), was held at the Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki.Last Updated: 2023.06

Co-Players

Hashimoto Norihisa

Primitive media artist

Myokam Hiroko

curator, archivist/researcher