Banksy Barcode screenprint 2003, full sheet, front

Banksy and Japan: The Rat, the Tide Gate and the Tokyo Paradox

The rat on the tide gate: Hinode, 2019

The door is a tide gate, a steel panel that protects the station from flooding at high tide. The rat was sprayed in a space roughly one metre high and fifty centimetres wide, looking up with an umbrella overhead. A city official told reporters in January 2019 that staff had known about it for more than ten years. His explanation of why it survived became the most quoted line of the affair.

How a flood door became an exhibit

At the end of December 2018 the city was told that the stencil looked like Banksy’s work. Governor Yuriko Koike later said the tip had come from the director of a national museum of modern art, which made officials take it seriously. In January 2019 the panel was removed and put into storage to protect it. On 17 January the governor posted photographs of herself beside the rat and asked whether it was “a gift to Tokyo?”. Her post added, in Japanese, that the rat seemed to be carrying a bag. Within a day the story was being reported abroad, usually beside a comparison with Banksy’s parachuting umbrella rats.

Fourteen days in Shinjuku

On 19 April 2019 the governor announced a public showing. The panel stood near the north entrance on the second floor of the No. 1 Main Building in Shinjuku from 25 April to 8 May, open from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm through Golden Week. In the same press conference Koike drew a line that the city has repeated ever since: Tokyo does not condone graffiti on public property. “If there are any problems, I’d very much like Mr Banksy to contact the Tokyo Metropolitan Government,” she told reporters on the opening day.

Hinode Pier: the rat goes home, almost

After the Shinjuku showing the panel went back into storage. Requests to see it again kept arriving, and on 25 November 2019 it was put on free display in the No. 2 passenger waiting area at Hinode Pier, a short walk from the door where it was found. The city had tried to have it authenticated. The artist’s office replied that it could not authenticate anything involving illegal activity. In the record, then, the rat remains what Tokyo has always called it: a work that looks like a Banksy.

Bristol before Tokyo: roots, crews and the stencil

Banksy is a pseudonymous, England-based street artist, political activist and film director who has never publicly confirmed his identity. His work grew out of the Bristol underground of the late 1980s and 1990s, where graffiti writers, sound systems and musicians worked side by side. He began as a freehand writer between 1990 and 1994, one of the DryBreadZ Crew, known as DBZ, with two artists called Kato and Tes. Local names such as Nick Walker, Inkie and 3D formed the scene around him.

The Bristol photographer Steve Lazarides met him in those years and later became his agent, until the two parted in 2008. By 2000 Banksy had turned to stencils. In his own telling, he made the switch while hiding from the police under a rubbish lorry, staring at its stencilled serial number. Stencils were faster, cleaner and repeatable, which is why the same rat, girl or policeman can appear in Brighton, Melbourne and, perhaps, Minato.

The first show that nobody came to

In March 2001 Banksy shared a bill with Jamie Reid, the designer of the Sex Pistols’ artwork, at The Arches in Glasgow. The show was called Peace Is Tough. Lazarides remembered only 25 people on the opening night, and said Banksy answered the empty room by stencilling the venue overnight. A flyer from that run, pink buses on white card, sits in our collection as the Peace Is Tough flyer from The Arches, March 2001.

Jamie Reid and Banksy Peace Is Tough flyer, The Arches Glasgow 2001, front
Flyer for Peace Is Tough, The Arches, Glasgow, March 2001. Look closer: Banksy’s name is the small stencilled word after the plus sign, billed below Jamie Reid. Photograph: Japonista.

Pest Control: the paperwork office

Banksy set up an office to handle his paperwork. Pest Control describes itself as the sole point of contact for the artist and the only issuer of certificates of authenticity. It keeps records of the work and is the only place where new pieces are offered. Its rules decide what any collector, in Tokyo or anywhere else, can prove. We return to them below.

From Bristol to Hinode: a timeline

Exhibition halls: Yokohama 2020 and Tennozu 2021

In Japan, Banksy has mostly been shown in ticketed halls rather than met on the street. Two touring shows made that possible, and both were built from private collections.

Genius or Vandal? at Yokohama station

Genius or Vandal? opened on 15 March 2020 on the second floor of ASOBUILD, a building connected to Yokohama station. Its organisers billed more than 70 works, including original pieces, prints and objects, after a tour of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Madrid, Lisbon and Hong Kong that they said had drawn over a million visitors. It closed from 28 March to 29 May under pandemic measures, reopened on 30 May and was extended to 4 October. The organisers’ own announcement was candid: the show was not authorised or curated by Banksy and was built from collectors’ holdings.

Who is Banksy? at Terrada’s G1 building

The second show began on 21 August 2021 in the G1 building of a warehouse company at Tennozu, on Tokyo Bay, and ran to 5 December. It adapted a touring exhibition that had opened in Australia in 2016, and added something new: a television network’s art department rebuilt street scenes from Britain, the United States and the Middle East at full size. The actor Tomoya Nakamura was its ambassador and narrated the audio guide. The show then travelled to Nagoya, Osaka, Koriyama, Takaoka and Fukuoka.

The office that says no

A correction to the common story: the shows that brought Banksy to Japanese audiences were not Banksy exhibitions in any sense he accepts. His office answers the question in one line on its own site.

That sentence is about the shows, not the works on the walls, many of which are prints and canvases that left the studio with papers. It does mean the framing, the reconstructions, the audio guide and the shop at the exit belong to the organisers. The office goes further on objects. It says it issues certificates for paintings, prints and sculptures, but not for stickers, posters, defaced currency or anything that was not originally meant as a work of art. And, in its own words, “we certainly don’t issue them for anything committed illegally, because we have a lawyer.”

Banksy has turned that tension into a joke more than once. Publicising his 2023 Glasgow show of old stencils, he wrote that he had kept them hidden for years because they could be used as evidence of criminal damage. Now they hung in a gallery as works of art, and he asked which was the greater crime.

Camouflage and flowers: BAPE, Medicom and the tribute line

The Japanese object most often photographed with Banksy’s imagery was made in Tokyo. On 7 November 2020 A Bathing Ape released a Flower Bomber statue in its ABC camouflage, made by Medicom Toy, through BAPE stores, the 2G shop and Medicom’s own outlets. The figure is about 360 millimetres tall. The masked man and his bouquet come from a wall painted in Palestine in 2003, here dressed head to toe in the camouflage at the heart of BAPE. A pink and a blue version followed on 25 September 2021.

Medicom Toy Brandalism Flower Bomber statue, BAPE ABC camouflage, side view
Brandalism Flower Bomber statue in BAPE ABC camouflage, Medicom Toy, 2020. Look closer: the flowers keep their natural colours while the whole figure, cap to shoes, takes the camouflage. Photograph: Japonista.

Read the small print and the line between homage and authorship is clear. Medicom described the figure as inspired by Banksy’s graffiti, and its copyright line names Full Colour Black Ltd. BAPE’s own page calls Brandalism a work inspired by the masked artist. None of it claims to be a Banksy. The office’s guidance on merchandise is blunt: if something looks like a Banksy product, it almost certainly is not. For a collector that is not a defect. It is a category, the Japanese tribute object, collected for what it says about BAPE and Medicom as much as about Bristol.

Two pieces in our collection sit in that category: the Brandalism Flower Bomber statue in BAPE camouflage and the Brandalism Flower Bomber skateboard deck. The camouflage itself has its own history, told in A Bathing Ape: Nigo’s empire, and the maker’s bear-shaped figures are traced in BE@RBRICK, from vinyl to vault. Wider BAPE pieces live on the BAPE shelf.

Why Japan collects Banksy this way

This section is our argument, not a report. Three features of the Japanese chapter stand out, and each has a documented basis.

The exhibition as an event

Both big shows were run by committees that included national broadcasters. The Yokohama show listed a national broadcaster among its local organisers. The Tokyo show was designed by a network’s set builders, had an actor as ambassador, a special programme on air and branded snacks in its shop. That is how Japan stages blockbuster exhibitions of many kinds, and it put Banksy in front of families who would never seek out a gallery. The cost was distance from the street, which is the one place the work was made for.

Character first, critique second

Tokyo’s governor called the Hinode stencil a “cute rat”, and one visitor at Hinode Pier told reporters she found it cute and hoped it was genuine. Yet the Yokohama organisers themselves described his rat series as a stand-in for society’s most vulnerable people. In Japan, a country fluent in mascots, the rat arrived first as a character. The same pattern runs through the camouflage statue. That is our reading of the evidence, and it explains why the Japanese tribute object, from Shibuya toy shops, is now a collecting field of its own.

Paper over paint

The pieces a collector in Japan can document best are the ones Banksy made to leave the street: screenprints, books, records and project souvenirs. They travel with paperwork, which a rat on a flood door never will. For the Japanese counterpart, see our guide to prints by Murakami, Kusama and Nara.

From Edo editions to Tokyo tributes

Seen as part of the new Japonisme, the pattern is an old one. Ukiyo-e was an art of multiples made for city buyers, and each sheet came from a team of designer, carver, printer and publisher, with the publisher deciding what was made. Banksy’s Japanese life runs on multiples too: screenprints, a toy-company statue and touring shows produced by committees he never joined. The street artist who refuses the system ended up, in Japan, inside the oldest system of all. That is our reading, and our Japanese Artists Bible traces that line from Edo to Superflat.

Bridge: for how anime, fashion, design and antiques add up to Japan’s soft power, read whatever happened to Cool Japan.

Certificates and objects: a collector’s table

Everything here follows the office’s published rules. They are the only rules that count.

Prints from the studio years

Screenprints made for sale are the clearest pieces to document. Among those in our collection are Barcode, a 2003 screenprint, Napalm, a 2004 screenprint, I Fought the Law, 2004 and Sale Ends, version two, 2017. Each page sets out the papers that come with it.

Banksy Barcode screenprint 2003, full sheet, front
Barcode, screenprint, 2003. Look closer: the bars of the barcode bend outwards where the leopard has broken free, and the trailer wheels sit under the code. Photograph: Japonista.

Project souvenirs

The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem opened in March 2017. Our Walled Off Hotel box set of 2018 with its receipt shows a printed watchtower with a piece of painted concrete, kept with the hotel’s invoice. Dismaland, the five-week “family theme park unsuitable for children” at Weston-super-Mare in 2015, is recalled by pieces such as the framed Napalm postcard from Dismaland.

Banksy Walled Off Hotel box set, watchtower print with concrete, front
The Walled Off Hotel box set, Bethlehem, 2018, beside its hotel invoice. Look closer: children ride a swing carousel hung from the watchtower, above a strip of painted wall concrete. Photograph: Japonista.

Where the record differs

Two details of the Tokyo story change with the teller. On size, one city announcement placed the rat within a space about one metre by fifty centimetres, while a national broadcaster described the work itself as twenty by twenty centimetres. Both can be true if the smaller figure is the rat and the larger is the patch of door around it. On discovery, early press reports said residents pointed out the resemblance in December 2018. The governor later said the tip came from the director of a national modern art museum. The two accounts may describe separate messages; the city has not published the correspondence.

A sceptic’s view

A fair objection runs like this. A rat sprayed on a flood door, never claimed, shown by a city that says it does not condone graffiti, and two exhibitions the artist disowns, add up to Banksy without Banksy. Why write about it at all? Because the Japanese chapter shows something the London headlines miss. Banksy’s refusal to certify street work is a choice, and Tokyo met that choice with public displays and careful wording, never claiming more than it knew. The city kept saying “a work that looks like a Banksy”. Collectors could use the same honesty.

Bibliography: books, films, exhibitions and records

Books and catalogues

  • Banksy, Wall and Piece. His own account of the early years, including the stencil story.
  • Steve Lazarides, Banksy Captured, 2019. Photographs from eleven years beside the artist.

Films

  • Exit Through the Gift Shop, directed by Banksy, premiered at Sundance on 24 January 2010; nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Projects and exhibitions

  • Peace Is Tough, with Jamie Reid, The Arches, Glasgow, March 2001.
  • Dismaland, Tropicana lido, Weston-super-Mare, 21 August–27 September 2015.
  • The Walled Off Hotel, Bethlehem, opened March 2017.
  • Cut and Run, Glasgow, 2023.
  • Genius or Vandal?, ASOBUILD, Yokohama, 15 March–4 October 2020 (not authorised by the artist).
  • Who is Banksy?, Terrada G1 building, Tokyo, 21 August–5 December 2021, then Nagoya, Osaka, Koriyama, Takaoka and Fukuoka (not authorised by the artist).

Records and covers

  • Blur, Think Tank, 2003, cover art by Banksy.

What we checked and left out

We left out every claim that Banksy visited Japan, because none is on the record. We did not repeat guesses about his identity. We give no figures for what his works have fetched, because a price says nothing about authorship. Street pieces of uncertain origin stay out of this account. For road signs and boards carrying his motifs, the office’s rule applies: nothing made on the street is certified.

Answered plainly: frequently asked questions

Tokyo never claimed its rat, and that restraint was the most Banksy-like thing in the whole affair. That is our reading.

If you are looking for a particular print or project piece, the private search service in Japan explains how a request works. Japanese artists who changed street and pop culture are gathered in the contemporary and upcoming Japanese artists collection, and a sibling story of a repeating icon is told in KAWS and the power of the repeating icon.

Further reading

References

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