Tokyo 2020 Official Art Posters
On January 6, 2020, the official art posters for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were unveiled.
For the Tokyo 2020 Games, artworks themed on the Olympics and Paralympics were commissioned from artists in Japan and abroad, and are used as Tokyo 2020 official art posters to help build momentum.
Since the early 20th century, each Games’ organizing committee has produced posters to promote awareness and understanding of the Olympics as a sporting and cultural event. Olympic posters also serve to convey the character of each Games to the world.
In recent years, including Paralympic posters, internationally active artists and designers have been commissioned to create works that become each Games’ cultural and artistic legacy. Among them, works that become icons of their era have also been born.
Below, we present all 20 works produced.
12 Olympic Works
Naoki Urasawa (manga artist)
Japan has a genre of manga rarely seen elsewhere in the world: sports manga. This played a major role in the development and flourishing of Japanese manga, because the excitement of watching sports fit the publication pace of Japan’s weekly manga. Manga artists have continually challenged themselves to convey the thrilling excitement of sports through manga.
“To be continued in the next issue!” Every week, readers watch over the next development as if it were the outcome of a real competition.
This is a manga drawn especially for the Olympics. I tried a way of drawing that transcends sport, race, and gender. Everyone has their turn. Next, it’s your turn.
Shinro Ohtake (painter)
A group of colorful celestial balls flitting through outer space at the speed of light… a once-in-a-lifetime play between glittering, brilliant colors and the gods… far above the ground, I was daydreaming such an Olympic scene.
Abruptly, a pink figure appeared.
Without blinking, without tiring, it calmly kept kicking up a bright red sphere.
Was it the “god of play”?
I remembered learning “paper cutting (kiri-e)” at the elementary school I attended during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. I thought I’d try to express the imaginary cosmos in my head through paper cutting.
I randomly cut out colored paper, printed matter, and half-finished paintings scattered around my studio and threw them into the air… where the fluttering fragments of color fell, “Space Kicker” roughly emerged.
Daijiro Ohara
Lines of sight, parabolas, boundary lines, foreshadowing…. In this world, various lines intersect. Those countless lines, sometimes entangling and sometimes unraveling, form images within our environment and our body and mind.
In this work, starting from the sacred flame inherited from Greece, I depict the flow lines woven through the Tokyo 2020 Olympic torch relay, and the more than 800 municipality names that become their knots.
What on earth is the line connecting an individual to this festival where the world’s top athletes gather to compete? Connecting and breaking off—it is very difficult to draw in the line linking a great phenomenon and an individual. Even in such a diverse world where lines that won’t yield easily are tangled, I want to approach it with hope that there exist places where art and bodies that touch each person’s heartstrings well up.
Shoko Kanazawa (calligrapher)
With the wish that the souls of the athletes and the feelings of all the people who support the Games will soar high into the sky from here in Tokyo and reach people around the world.
The calligraphy, into which dazzling light streams, images the athletes’ dynamism. In the background I placed genuine gold leaf, an outstanding Japanese craft technique. To express the three-dimensionality of the calligraphy, everything down to the smallest detail, including the shading, is genuine; fusing the released energy with calligraphy and traditional technique into one, I express the Tokyo Olympics with “Japanese-ness.”
Tomoko Konoike (artist)
Each human being, as a single animal, has an entirely different body, grasps the world with entirely different senses, and lives the world through their own Umwelt. No two are the same. There are no same words. There is no same light. If the Olympics resolves itself to face that fact sincerely, then for one small creature the world becomes full of sensuousness, and eventually a new ecosystem begins to move.
Taku Satoh (graphic designer)
When five rings in separate places move along trajectories emanating from the center of each ring, they form the mark of the five rings. Here I expressed a “future” in which athletes gathering from around the world, each with their own individuality (diversity), compete (personal best), and their totality ultimately forms the harmonious figure of the five rings. In other words, the poster itself does not move like a video, but I created it imagining the dynamic image that arises in your mind when you see it.
I insisted on entirely hand-drawn expression because the Olympics is a competition that challenges the body’s limits. I also embedded a message here against the modern tendency to prioritize thinking with the brain and to forget physicality.
Asao Tokolo (artist)
The Tokyo 2020 emblem’s “harmonized chequered pattern” is an indigo circle drawn by combining an equal number of rectangles extracted by connecting the midpoints of rhombuses, for both the Olympics and Paralympics. Indigo has excellent weather resistance in printing and is one of the strong, beautiful colors that remain over time.
A figure in which rectangles as “individuals” form a “group” accompanied by a geometric “rule.” It is realized through a mixture of computer technology and handwork. Paying respect to the compass-and-ruler design carried out in 1964, and imagining what techniques design will be done with in the future, as an artist living in 2020 I made a baton to hand to the next generation and beyond. By making the original drawing by hand, the guide lines and traces up to the pattern’s emergence are visualized, and physicality too is projected onto those lines.
With great respect for the athletes, I wanted to create the Games’ symbol with all my might.
Takashi Homma (photographer)
I believe the Olympics is not only for selected athletes. I created this with the feeling that it is a matter for all citizens, from the elderly to adults to children, that it is hope, and that it is something that remains in memory.
Theseus Chan (art director)
That skateboarding—which originally arose from rebellious street culture—would become an Olympic event was unthinkable until now. Skateboarding has its own language and continues to evolve as a relatively new sport. It is also a composite of art, design, fashion, and music, and has its own methods of expression there.
The work is composed of three layers. First, the layer of Extreme Revelation, inspired by the spirit of rebellion. The traces of skateboard grinds are deformed like brushstrokes, and trial and error is repeated in pursuit of perfection. Next, a lamination of materials evoking the sport of skateboarding, such as concrete and metal, expressing uncertainty, darkness, and oppression. Yet with brilliant colors welling up from within, it also depicts an irrepressible youth and impudence. The third layer is almost invisible, but the enigmatic inversion of numbers and metaphorical graphics asks whether the existing order is something of value.
Chris Ofili (artist)
Viviane Sassen (photographer)
I wanted to make a work that is playful, richly colorful, and meaningful. While I intend to depict the joy of competition, I also wanted to convey the diversity of cultures and nationalities of the people who take part in the Olympics. The large polka dots of colorful ink image the rings of the Olympic symbol. I abstracted and reconstructed the Olympic icon.
Philippe Weisbecker (artist)
A few months ago, when the organizing committee asked me to create a poster for the Tokyo 2020 Games, at first I thought, “Why was I—who only paints still lifes—chosen?” I had no idea what to do, but of course I couldn’t decline such an honorable request. With the help of my agent Natsuko Kida, I searched the internet for elements related to the Olympics. When I found an image of the New National Stadium, I thought this was material worth trying. After receiving materials and making many sketches, I finally finished a work I was satisfied with and sent it to Japan. A few weeks later, I received a proof from the printer, but looking at it again, I felt somehow unsatisfied. It clearly lacked boldness and essence. The deadline was approaching, but they specially accommodated me and let me start over from scratch. Since the host country was Japan, I decided to draw on washi (Japanese paper), which I regularly use in my work. And, letting my hand go where it would, I drew the figure of the Olympic stadium.
8 Paralympic Works
Hirohiko Araki (manga artist)
Clouds like raging waves.
I drew them with the image of the gods of sport
descending to Japan from high in the sky.
Using the composition of Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” as a motif,
I agonized over what color to paint Mt. Fuji,
and painted it honey-colored.
Koji Kakinuma (calligrapher)
Calligraphy, with a history of over 3,000 years, is one of the great pillars of Japanese culture and art. I have explored the history of that calligraphy and continued my own search and presentation of calligraphy as someone living in the present. For the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic art project, after agonizing over what to take as a motif from among tens of thousands of kanji and infinite words, what I arrived at was the single character “開 (open).”
“To open one’s whole being unconditionally toward the universe—that is an explosion.” The words of the artist Taro Okamoto, expressing his challenge and philosophy toward creation, form the foundation of this work. Holding in my heart the souls of athletes who challenge their own summits daily, I struck the brush into the paper, “Open! Open! Open!…”, until I myself was completely opened. I hope that at this century’s celebration held in Japan, not only the athletes and sports people gathering from around the world but each of us who support the Games will open our hearts wide toward possibility, and pass this festival of peace on to the future.
Forward, onward.
Humanity’s prayer to keep pressing single-mindedly forward
leaps beyond the body’s limits, beyond disability, beyond nationality and gender.
In 2020, the lives living in this very moment—
I wanted to symbolically depict all of them as equal and beautiful.
The main motif is “a person moving forward.”
A figure swinging the arms wide and kicking up the ground with all its might.
That primitive sculptural form of movement expresses the will of all Paralympians
striving to move forward toward a more certain future.
All that each athlete has built up.
In respect for all of human history, which has kept advancing through trial and error.
GOO CHOKI PAR (graphic designer)
Forward, onward.
Humanity’s prayer to keep pressing single-mindedly forward
leaps beyond the body’s limits, beyond disability, beyond nationality and gender.
In 2020, the lives living in this very moment—
I wanted to symbolically depict all of them as equal and beautiful.
The main motif is “a person moving forward.”
A figure swinging the arms wide and kicking up the ground with all its might.
That primitive sculptural form of movement expresses the will of all Paralympians
striving to move forward toward a more certain future.
All that each athlete has built up.
In respect for all of human history, which has kept advancing through trial and error.
Tomoyuki Araki (artist)
There are all kinds of events—which one should I draw?
I decided to draw wheelchair basketball, which struck my heart when I watched a game live.
The hot, heated games between athletes—the tremendous sense of speed and power.
For color, I used bright colors that lift your spirits.
All the spectators enjoy watching the heated game.
The athletes fight with all their might.
I drew that strength using bright colors.
Looking at the work,
not only people who are full of energy but also those who lack energy right now—
I truly hope they receive even more energy and power,
and feel the wonder of para-sports, the power of the competition,
and the courage of the athletes.
Asao Tokolo (artist)
The Tokyo 2020 emblem’s “harmonized chequered pattern” is an indigo circle drawn by combining an equal number of rectangles extracted by connecting the midpoints of rhombuses, for both the Olympics and Paralympics. Indigo has excellent weather resistance in printing and is one of the strong, beautiful colors that remain over time.
A figure in which rectangles as “individuals” form a “group” accompanied by a geometric “rule.” It is realized through a mixture of computer technology and handwork. Paying respect to the compass-and-ruler design carried out in 1964, and imagining what techniques design will be done with in the future, as an artist living in 2020 I made a baton to hand to the next generation and beyond. By making the original drawing by hand, the guide lines and traces up to the pattern’s emergence are visualized, and physicality too is projected onto those lines.
With great respect for the athletes, I wanted to create the Games’ symbol with all my might.
Mika Ninagawa (photographer / film director)
In a space where only the athlete Rensi Chokai, I, and the camera existed,
I simply kept releasing the shutter.
Para-athletes are cool.
A single shot taken with that simple feeling.
Just as a work is born from an empty space,
the beginning that transcends everything lies in a casual place.
Chihiro Mori (artist)
A cityscape of buildings like a bar graph
A junction like internal organs
A town whose feel underfoot is like gums
In the shadow of the birth of a new Ultra-C
I push the cerebellum with a brain spatula
Colorful mire
Warmed bones and building wind
Springs of air
A transparent curve
Akira Yamaguchi (painter)
