Kaikai Kiki
Kaikai Kiki is the company of the artist Takashi Murakami. It began in 1996 as the Hiropon Factory, his production workshop, and was incorporated in 2001 as Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. in Japan, with a New York company formed the same year and a Los Angeles company in 2010. On a print, a figure or a poster, the name is a starting point for identifying the publisher or collaborating company. It does not, by itself, authenticate the object or establish who made it.
Definition
Kaikai Kiki is three things at once, and collectors meet all three. It is a studio, with offices and production rooms, that makes and promotes Murakami's own work. It is an artist management company, which looks after the careers of younger artists and which Murakami has likened to a record label. And it is a producer of merchandise, from plush flowers to signed offset prints. The two characters Kaikai and Kiki carry the name into the work itself, as figures, on prints and on packaging.
The name is older than the company. Murakami borrowed it from a critic of the late seventeenth century who used the words to praise the paintings of Kano Eitoku, the great screen painter of the Momoyama period; the sense is brave, strong and sensitive. That choice is typical of the house's founder, who trained in Nihonga, the twentieth-century school of Japanese-style painting, before he turned to anime and manga for his subjects.
Origin
Murakami was born in Tokyo in 1962 and studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts, hoping at first to become an animator; he went on to a doctorate in Nihonga in 1993. In 1996 he set up the Hiropon Factory so that he could work on a larger scale and in more media; in 2001 it became Kaikai Kiki. The company began in Asaka, Saitama, and later moved its Tokyo offices to Moto-Azabu, with a further office in New York and affiliates in Berlin and Taiwan.
Two galleries followed. In 2008 the company turned the basement below its Tokyo office into Kaikai Kiki Gallery, where Murakami curates every exhibition, for the artists the company manages and for international names. A second gallery, Hidari Zingaro, opened in 2010 in the Nakano Broadway shopping centre in Nakano, Tokyo, and has since grown to four spaces there. From 2002 to 2014 Murakami also ran Geisai, an art fair in which artists took part directly rather than through dealers.
Key facts
| Founder | Takashi Murakami, born Tokyo, 1962 |
|---|---|
| Precursor | Hiropon Factory, from 1996 |
| Incorporated | 2001 in Japan and New York; Los Angeles, 2010 |
| Galleries | Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, from 2008; Hidari Zingaro, Nakano, from 2010 |
| Artists represented include | Mr., Chiho Aoshima, Aya Takano, ob, KAWS, Mark Grotjahn |
| Meaning of the name | Brave, strong and sensitive, after a seventeenth-century critic writing on Kano Eitoku |
How to identify it
- The copyright line. Prints and objects made through the studio usually carry a copyright notice naming Murakami and Kaikai Kiki with a year. In our handling, that line is the first thing to read on the back of a sheet or the base of a figure.
- The signature and number. Signed prints from the studio are typically signed and numbered by hand in the margin; read the number against the edition stated for that title, as our entry on edition numbers and artist's proofs explains.
- The process. In our handling, many studio editions are offset lithographs and some are screen prints; the difference is set out in our entry on the silkscreen print.
- Other artists. Kaikai Kiki is not only Murakami. A print by MADSAKI, Mr. or Futura made with the studio carries the company's name too, and should be read as that artist's work published by Kaikai Kiki.
Where it appears in the collection
The studio's world sits on two shelves: the Takashi Murakami and Superflat shelf and the Kaikai Kiki institution shelf. Among the pieces we hold are a MADSAKI White Flag four-colour offset print of 2018, signed in an edition of 300, a pair of Kaikai and Kiki figures made for ComplexCon in 2018, and a Murakami and Porter helmet bag with its flower plush. The artist's career is read at length in our guide to collecting Takashi Murakami, and his prints beside Kusama's and Nara's in our guide to the three print markets.
Related entries
- Superflat: the idea Murakami named in 2000.
- Offset print: the process behind most studio editions.
- Certificate of authenticity: what paperwork can and cannot prove.
Sources
- Takashi Murakami, encyclopaedia entry, sections on the Hiropon Factory, Kaikai Kiki, the galleries and Geisai. wikipedia.org
Last reviewed 15 November 2026. The Japonista Curation and Concierge Team, Tokyo, Japan.