Taka Ishii had his heart set on becoming a painter while studying for a fine arts degree in Los Angeles. Until, that is, the day he saw photographer Larry Clark’s “Tulsa” prints in Los Angeles. “I was shocked to see his work,” says Ishii. “There was lots of violence and drugs. I liked it. It was like watching a documentary.” When he returned to Tokyo from LA in the early 1990s, Ishii discovered Japan had its own photographers working in a similar vein, people such as Daido Moriyama and his iconic 1979 image of a stray dog, “Misawa”. “That was the start,” Ishii says of his then-nascent career path. When he opened his first gallery in 1994, it was with a solo show of the same Clark that had originally inspired him. A year later, he showed Moriyama’s works for the first time. “To exhibit those two photographers was a dream come true,” Ishii says. The reality of operating a gallery, however, was harder than he had expected. “I had worked as a private dealer, but never in a gallery before,” he says. “I didn’t know the system. I had to learn everything from scratch.” Tokyo had few international contemporary art galleries at the time, and Ishii did not know any collectors. He reached out to magazines and newspapers to attract media coverage. Slowly, collectors followed. Fortunately, his original gallery was located in the first floor of his family home, and was therefore rent-free. Low-key, soft-spoken and with an air of disheveled cool, Ishii is now one of Japan’s most successful contemporary art dealers, with two galleries in Tokyo and one in New York City. His stable of established artists includes Moriyama, Nobuyoshi Araki, Naoya Hatakeyama, Thomas Demand, Sterling Ruby, Dan Graham, and Cerith Wyn Evans. He also actively promotes up-and-coming Japanese photographers and mixed media artists. These days, Ishii’s collectors mostly come from abroad. The domestic market remains a challenge. A difficult venture in Kyoto proved that point. He and a fellow Tokyo-based gallerist opened a collaborative space in the ancient capital in 2008. But collectors there, wary of outsiders, wouldn’t buy from them. “You need a strong connection with the local people, especially in Kyoto,” he says. “We didn’t have that. I really was too bad.” The space closed in 2013. Ishii remains optimistic – the trends are moving in his favour. Japan is becoming an international destination, and the number of young Japanese collectors is steadily growing. “Interest in post-war Japanese photography is growing abroad. Even foreign museums are buying now,” he says. “We have so many great photographers. Helping them reach a global audience is my ultimate reward.”

Tomio Koyama’s passion for contemporary art began, like many great love affairs, in Venice. It was the 1990s, and the future gallery owner was attending his first Venice Biennale. Lost in the narrow, twisting lanes, he was hunting down a space showing works by the late conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim. Two deer sculptures with flaming antlers were the clue he needed. Deep inside the building, Koyama discovered a world he had never imagined. “It was filled with famous collectors and artists of all kinds, all mingling and drinking together,” he says. “I could feel the power of art. I really wanted to make something like this. I knew the variety and creativity suited my personality.” Koyama was 33 when he opened his first Tokyo gallery in 1996 in the same place as the Sagacho Exhibit Space in Tokyo’s Koto district. The 1927 red brick warehouse was once a rice market, and the first exhibition space for what became some of Japan’s most influential contemporary galleries. At the time, Koyama was among a new generation of gallerists looking for alternative spaces and collectors beyond Ginza, once the heart of Japan’s art scene. “My gallery and my generation are very different from older Japanese art gallery owners,” he says. “They were from inside Japanese society representing Japanese collections and bringing in historically big name foreign artists.” In contrast, Koyama says, he had to focus on international art fairs when he started because at that time there were no buyers in Japan who were interested in works by the young artists he was representing. His big break came when he began showing two up-and-coming artists, now world famous, Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara. The former he represented in Japan from the mid-1990s to early 2000s; the latter remained with him for a remarkable 19 years. Buyers still ask him for ‘the next Murakami’ – someone Koyama has yet to find. “Murakami’s style was so unique in the ‘90s art scene – a genre all of its own. These days, we have a new generation of artists in Japan, all highly trained, and all with their own styles,” says Koyama, who represents about 50 emerging and established contemporary painters and sculptors out of his gallery space in Roppongi. Through Koyama Art Projects, Koyama and his team curate exhibits at other spaces outside of his own gallery. One of his goals through these projects is to develop a new ceramic market combining the skills and aesthetics of older generations with those of younger, contemporary potters, and introducing their works outside of Japan. “We have a huge variety of artists, artworks, and accumulated technical skill in Japan,” he says. “These artists are ambassadors for our cultural spirit.”