Born 1945 in Shimizu City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Fukumoto Shihoko graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts in 1968 with a degree in Western painting. After engaging in academic research on ethnic art in New Guinea, she began to consider the question of her own identity, studying the dyeing and weaving culture that flourished in Kyoto under TATSUMURA Heizo II. In the process, she encountered indigo and began producing her own works. Since the 1980s, she has had a number of opportunities to exhibit her indigo dye works, which combine Japanese tradition and her own techniques, at international and solo exhibitions in Europe and the USA, and has received international acclaim. In recent years, she has focused her attention on rare natural fabrics which are a condensed product of the handspun industry. She has gained a renewed appreciation of natural environment and human temperament reveled in Japan’s old and rapidly disappearing handicraft tradition, and attempts to bring this to life in her own work. In 2015, as a compilation of her activities since the beginning of her career, she published Fukumoto Shihoko: Japan Blue (Akaakasha), which was awarded the Publication Culture International Exchange Society Prize at the 50th Japan Book Design Awards. Her recent solo exhibition “Fukumoto Shihoko Exhibition: Ai no Ao (Japan Blue) 2021″ (Takashimaya Art Gallery and ARTCOURT Gallery), has revealed new developments in her series of works using old cloth.

Born 1959 in Ehime, Japan. Her area of expertise is Japanese Art History. She is a professor at Akita University of Art. Graduated from Tohoku University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Oriental and Japanese Art History, and worked as a curator at Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art (1983-2012). In 2006, she completed the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, Department of Cultural Resources Studies, the University of Tokyo. Ph.D. in Literature. After serving as director of the Koriyama City Museum of Art (2012-20), she assumed her current position in 2021.
Her major publications include A Study of Performing Arts in Early Modern Shonai: Tsuruoka, Sakata, Kuromori (Serika Shobo, 2013, awarded the “Honda Yasuji Prize” by the Folk Performing Arts Society).