The name of this tea room, Kankai-an, derives from the use of the Chinese scholar tree, known in Japan as enju, at its core. Originating in China, this tree has long been cherished as a symbol of longevity, good fortune, protection from evil, and happiness. It was also the symbolic tree of Shibuya Makuhari High School, the alma mater of the host, Kankuro Ueshima. Together with the artist Rui Sasaki, Ueshima gathered large, beautiful leaves from that very tree; these are now part of Sasaki’s piece which is embedded within the walls of the tea room—as if suspending time within them. Centered on the personal memory of youth, this space becomes a “tea room of time” where heterogeneous temporalities accumulate in layers.

Upon opening the entrance door, the order of time is immediately disturbed. The first work to appear is Alicja Kwade’s Against the Run. With its second hand pointing ceaselessly upward while the clock body itself rotates in reverse, the work unsettles the premise of time’s irreversibility and overturns our perception. This is followed by a piece by Yuki Nara, which embraces the traces and fluctuations inscribed in its material, suggesting that time is something that comes into being through subtle vibration.

Within the tea room, time is compressed and revealed in layers. Two tea bowls form the heart of this concept. One is the “Ryuki-wan” by Takuya Tsutsumi. (“Ryuki” means uplift.) Its lower layer contains coral reef sediment collected by scientists from the strata of Kikai Island, dating back approximately 3.5 million years; its middle layer incorporates sand from 1.5 million years ago; and its upper layer features sediment from 850,000 years ago onward—all lacquered onto a wooden bowl. The geological time of Kikai Island, formed through the uplift of coral reefs, is sealed within this single vessel. The other is a black Raku tea bowl by the sixteenth-generation Raku Kichizaemon, which carries the 450-year lineage of the Raku family and the memory of Kyoto's earth and stone. Here, geological time and the time of human endeavor stand face to face.

On the right wall, in the work by Rui Sasaki, plants are pressed between two sheets of glass and fired at high temperatures. They turn to ash, yet their forms are imprinted within the glass. Here, impersonal time and personal memory come into contact, taking on a visible form.

Beside the alcove stands a wooden sculpture by Kineta Kunimatsu. Its restrained form, inspired by the ridgeline of an iceberg, guides the gaze from the interior outward, connecting the space to the surrounding city.

At the back, resting upon a stone in the garden, is Isamu Noguchi’s Zazen. Built on a basic vertical-and-horizontal structure with a firm core, yet with a gentle play in its form, this lightly composed sculpture possesses a stillness that suspends time, much like zazen meditation. At this single point, the movement of the city and the weight of accumulated time are released.

In this tea room, time does not exist as a single linear flow. Rather, it appears as something multilayered and dynamic—reversing, accumulating, sometimes freezing, and eventually opening outward. The time gathered within extends through the garden—which borrows the cityscape as shakkei—and disperses freely outward.

The host’s intention was to place at the center the remembered time held within the Chinese scholar tree, drawing diverse temporal layers toward it, and to return the once-in-a-lifetime (ichigo-ichie) experience that emerges here back into the outside world. As a result, visitors do not simply exist within time; they stand within time as it moves in many directions. This is as if mutually resonating with the diverse and rich expressions of the “contemporary” unfolding in the exhibition space below.

Founder of "UESHIMA MUSEUM COLLECTION", born in Chiba prefecture, Japan in 1979. Ueshima graduated from Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen Makuhari Senior High School in 1998, then enrolled in the Natural Sciences I at the University of Tokyo. While attending the Faculty of Engineering, he started his own business and has since developed a diversified business as an entrepreneur and investor. Aside from managing his own businesses, Ueshima reaches out to domestic and international auction houses and galleries and continues to collect a wide range of art from leading domestic and international artists to young Japanese artists.
He was selected to be the "Top 200 Collectors 2024" by ARTnews in the US.

Curator and art critic. Professor Emeritus, Tokyo University of the Arts / Former Director, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, Kyoto University. She has served as Artistic Director of the Inujima Art House Project and Art Director of the Forest Festival of the Arts Okayama. Her honors include the Chevalier and Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France.