Moments from Yayoi Kusama Museum

Yayoi Kusama opened her own dedicated museum in Tokyo's Shinjuku district in 2017, a narrow five-story building holding a tightly rotating selection of her work, including her Infinity Mirror Rooms, immersive installations of mirrored, light-filled space that have become some of the most photographed and socially shared artworks of the past decade. Kusama, now in her nineties, has lived voluntarily in a Tokyo psychiatric facility for decades, continuing to paint and create daily in a nearby studio, and her work's recurring motifs, dots, nets, infinite repetition, are directly connected to hallucinations she has experienced since childhood, a genuinely personal visual language rather than a purely aesthetic choice.

Tickets are released online in advance batches and sell out extremely quickly, often within minutes, so if a visit is a priority, check the museum's release schedule well before your trip rather than assuming walk-up access, there essentially is none. Because the building is small and visitor numbers are deliberately capped to protect the delicate, immersive nature of the mirror rooms, expect a tightly timed, unhurried visit rather than a sprawling museum afternoon, this is designed to be experienced in a focused hour or two, not browsed casually.