KANTO

The Kantō region lies at the great bend of Honshū, marking the junction between Japan’s northeast and southwest. To the southeast it faces the Pacific Ocean; to the northwest rise serried high ranges; and at its center extends the nation’s largest plain. With the designation of Tokyo as the capital, Kantō has, in both name and substance, constituted the center of modern Japan. Configured through postwar development as the country’s politico-economic core, Kantō is now sheathed across nearly its entire extent by a largely homogeneous built environment. Within an endlessly level prospect knit together by road and rail networks, not only local climate and history but even people’s identities have grown difficult to discern. From this terrain where the natural environment has, for the most part, receded, we seek anew the contact zone between humans and their surroundings. Not in distant elsewhere, but beginning from our immediate spheres of life, we aim to reconceptualize ecology. It is this program that KANTO pursues through art and research.