Who Said Japan Doesn't Do Mural Festivals? JAPAN Walls in Shirahama
Written by Elena Calderón Aláez
Published on June 25th, 2026
Murals are often imagined as something that belongs elsewhere, in cities with abandoned industrial districts, sprawling warehouse walls or visibly rough urban edges. Shirahama is better known for its beaches, hot springs and resort atmosphere than for contemporary art. At first glance, it hardly resembles the kind of place associated with large-scale mural culture. But over the past years, the town has steadily transformed into one of the most interesting open-air art destinations in Japan, not through museums or institutions, but through walls.
This is where JAPAN WALLS takes place.
What makes the project particularly compelling is not simply the murals themselves, but the way they exist within the town. The works are not isolated attractions gathered into a single district or art complex. Instead, they are dispersed across Shirahama’s everyday landscape, along coastal roads, beside parking lots, near residential buildings and local businesses, gradually becoming embedded into the rhythm of the place itself.
From Honolulu to the Japanese coast
To understand JAPAN WALLS, however, it helps to begin somewhere else entirely: Hawaii.
The project is part of the global WORLDWIDE WALLS movement, formerly known as POW! WOW!, which began in Honolulu in 2011 as a gathering of artists focused on mural-making, community engagement and public space.
The project is part of the global WORLDWIDE WALLS movement, formerly known as POW! WOW!, which began in Honolulu in 2011 as a gathering of artists focused on mural-making, community engagement and public space. Over time, the initiative expanded internationally, developing editions across Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East while maintaining a strong emphasis on cultural exchange rather than purely commercial spectacle.
When the project first arrived in Japan in 2015, it followed a more familiar urban format. Early editions took place in Tokyo, bringing together dozens of artists painting simultaneously across the city in a dense, high-energy environment. But the eventual move toward Shirahama marked a significant shift in identity.
Here, the scale changed. The pace slowed down. Instead of operating inside one of the world’s largest metropolitan environments, the project found itself in a seaside town where the surrounding landscape: ocean, hills, hotels and quiet residential streets, became part of the experience. The murals no longer competed against visual overload. They had room to breathe.
That difference fundamentally altered the relationship between the artworks and the place hosting them.
An annual transformation
Today, JAPAN WALLS takes place annually, typically over the course of a week in late October.
Today, JAPAN WALLS takes place annually, typically over the course of a week in late October. During that time, around 10 to 20 artists from Japan and abroad arrive in Shirahama and begin working simultaneously across multiple locations throughout the town.
For a destination usually associated with summer tourism, the festival has quietly become one of Shirahama’s defining cultural moments of the year.
As the event unfolds, the atmosphere of the town changes noticeably. Cherry pickers and scaffolding appear beside buildings that, for most of the year, remain entirely ordinary. Walls evolve gradually over the course of several days, attracting locals, visitors and curious passersby who stop not only to photograph the finished works, but to witness the process itself.
And that process matters. Unlike exhibitions where the artwork arrives already completed, JAPAN WALLS unfolds in public view. Hesitation, revision, physical labor and improvisation all become visible parts of the final image. The festival exists as much in time as it does in space.
A growing constellation of artists
One of the most interesting aspects of JAPAN WALLS is that it resists the usual logic of mural festivals centered around one iconic image or headline artist. Shirahama does not revolve around a single “must-see” wall. Instead, what emerges over time is a dispersed constellation of works accumulated across multiple editions of the festival.
The artist lineup reflects the international character of the broader WORLDWIDE WALLS network while remaining deeply connected to the Japanese scene. Artists such as Jack Soren, whose loose and gestural visual language draws heavily from surf and street culture, or Yeka Haski, known for her fluid and dreamlike human figures, bring distinctly different sensibilities into Shirahama’s landscape. Other international artists connected to recent editions include Dina Saadi and Temsa7, further expanding the visual dialogue taking place across the town.
At the same time, Japanese artists remain central to the identity of the project.
At the same time, Japanese artists remain central to the identity of the project. Figures such as Dragon76 and Masaya Nakayama have become particularly associated with Shirahama’s evolving mural landscape. Dragon76’s emotionally charged portraits often hover somewhere between realism and abstraction, while Nakayama’s work leans toward layered narrative compositions that reward slower observation. Around them, artists including Seiji Matsumoto, KAC, CAB, Eri2win, Asota, Äura and Sugar contribute to a scene that feels simultaneously local and international.
What makes the dynamic especially compelling is the absence of hierarchy. Established artists and emerging voices work side by side, often within walking or cycling distance of each other, sharing the same timeframe and conditions. The result feels less like a conventional exhibition and more like a collective intervention unfolding organically across the town.
Over the years, more than thirty murals have accumulated throughout Shirahama. Some remain untouched, others slowly fade under the coastal climate, and a few eventually disappear altogether. Rather than functioning as static monuments, the works form a living archive that continues to evolve with each edition of the festival.
Seeing the process, and returning afterward
I had been visiting Shirahama for years before I truly understood the project.
For a long time, I only experienced the murals after the fact, encountering them as finished objects already absorbed into the landscape. But two years ago, I finally witnessed the festival while the artists were actively working, and that changed the way I understood the entire project.
Watching murals come together in real time reveals everything that usually remains invisible: the pauses, the adjustments, the conversations between artists and assistants, the moments when an image shifts direction halfway through its execution. What initially appears monumental suddenly becomes fragile and temporary.
This April, I returned to Shirahama for a completely different reason. Rather than documenting the production phase itself, I wanted to revisit the town after the previous edition had already ended, to observe what remained once the intensity of the festival had disappeared.
Without the scaffolding, paint cans or crowds, the murals felt different again. Less like events and more like traces embedded into the town’s daily life.
That lingering presence may be one of the most interesting aspects of JAPAN WALLS. The project does not simply leave images behind; it gradually reshapes how the town is experienced over time.
KEY TERRACE and the parallel exhibition
What further distinguishes JAPAN WALLS from many other mural festivals is that the project extends beyond public walls into other forms of artistic exchange.
At the center of this ecosystem sits SHIRAHAMA KEY TERRACE HOTEL SEAMORE, which functions not only as accommodation for artists and visitors, but also as one of the key cultural hubs of the festival itself.
Each year, alongside the mural production happening outdoors, the hotel hosts a parallel exhibition featuring works by the same participating artists through a project known as SQUARE SPACES.
The contrast between both formats is striking. Outside, artists work at architectural scale, negotiating visibility, weather conditions and public space. Inside, the same artists produce smaller square-format canvases that create a much more intimate viewing experience. The shift in scale transforms the relationship between artwork and audience. Murals become part of the urban landscape, while the canvases invite closer, slower observation.
Rather than existing separately, both dimensions of the festival complement each other. One expands outward into the town, the other condenses the same artistic moment into something personal and collectible.
Together, they reveal JAPAN WALLS not simply as a mural event, but as a broader platform for artistic dialogue.
Experiencing Shirahama through the murals
Part of what makes Shirahama particularly rewarding is the way the murals are discovered rather than presented.
There is no single route that defines the experience. The works are scattered throughout the town, appearing unexpectedly between hotels, side streets, parking areas and coastal roads.
There is no single route that defines the experience. The works are scattered throughout the town, appearing unexpectedly between hotels, side streets, parking areas and coastal roads. Because of this, one of the best ways to explore the project is by renting a bicycle and navigating the murals using the festival’s location map.
Moving through Shirahama by bike changes the rhythm of looking. It allows you to stop unexpectedly, return to a wall at a different time of day, or discover works gradually rather than consuming them all at once. The experience becomes less about checking locations off a list and more about moving through the town itself. In many ways, the search becomes part of the artwork.
Without the spectacle of production, the murals settle into Shirahama differently. They stop functioning as isolated interventions and begin to feel inseparable from the landscape around them.
And perhaps that is ultimately what makes JAPAN WALLS so compelling. Its impact is not limited to the images left behind on walls, but extends into the slower transformation of the town itself, a transformation that continues long after the festival has ended.
Elena Calderón Aláez is an independent researcher of Graffiti and Street Art and a flaneur nomad from Madrid. She graduated in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from Complutense University of Madrid and is an active member of the group StreetArtConservators. She is part of the Street Art Cities community, and a member of an urban art & graffiti researchers group in Spain. She has been based in Tokyo since 2020 and is the Chief curator of TOTEMO street art NFT marketplace since 2021.