Noritaka Tatehana’s Heel-less Shoes, with their distinctive heel-free silhouette, were inspired by takageta—tall wooden clogs associated with oiran, the high-ranking courtesans of Japan’s Edo period. Widely known for having been worn by Lady Gaga, they have become one of Tatehana’s signature works. But what lies behind their highly finished, sculptural form?

Brushes loaded with dye. Hammers worn through years of use. Instruments for measuring the thickness of leather. Antique shoe lasts. And the artist’s own hands working directly with his materials. Surrounding those hands are many others: the craftspeople behind kumihimo braiding, woodblock printing, metal casting, lacquerwork, taiko drums, Japanese swordmaking, and other traditions practiced across Japan.

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Currently on view at the Joshibi Art Museum, Rethink Noritaka Tatehana — In the Hands of Time commemorates the 15th anniversary of Tatehana’s creative practice. Yet this is not an exhibition concerned only with finished works. Instead, it reexamines “Rethink,” the concept that has guided his practice, through the perspective of handwork.

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Alongside Heel-less Shoes, the exhibition brings together sculpture, painting, printmaking, and installation spanning 15 years. It also reveals what lies behind those works: material research, prototypes, production processes, tools, and collaborations with practitioners of traditional crafts. Textile works from the collection of the Joshibi University of Art and Design Art Museum are shown alongside new works Tatehana created in response to them.

At a press preview on September 9, Tatehana personally guided members of the media through the exhibition, speaking about the works and the processes behind their creation.

From Heel-less Shoes to the Hands Behind Them

The exhibition takes as one of its starting points Heel-less Shoes, which Tatehana first developed as his graduation project at Tokyo University of the Arts.

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While at university, Tatehana majored in dyeing and weaving and studied yuzen, a Japanese resist-dyeing technique traditionally used to create elaborate pictorial designs on textiles. At the same time, he researched Japanese dress culture, including the elevated takageta worn by oiran. His search for ways to reinterpret those traditions in a contemporary context eventually led to the heel-free form of Heel-less Shoes.

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What is striking about this exhibition is that the shoes are not presented only as finished objects. Components used to construct them appear in the same space alongside dyeing brushes, shoe lasts, hammers, tools for pulling leather, and instruments for measuring its thickness.

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Many of the brushes Tatehana uses to dye leather are the same type employed in yuzen dyeing. Techniques he learned as a student for working with textile have therefore continued into his present practice, even as the material has shifted from fabric to leather.

His explanation of the hammers was particularly revealing. Those used to work the leather have slightly domed striking faces so that their edges do not damage the material. The surfaces are carefully polished so that even the smallest imperfection will not be transferred to the leather.

“Making your tools and taking care of them is really the first step. You can’t create a beautiful work without clean, well-kept tools.”

Tatehana recalls being taught this during his years at Tokyo University of the Arts. The idea encapsulates the kind of “handwork” examined throughout the exhibition.

Making does not begin only when the artist touches the work itself. The creative process has already begun with the care of the tools held in the maker’s hands.

How an Iconic Shoe Is Made

The internal construction of Heel-less Shoes is also revealed.

Tatehana has collected antique shoe lasts since his student days. He sometimes works from an old last for which only one foot survives, modifying it and reconstructing a corresponding pair. The exhibition also shows the relationship between an American shoe last dating from the 1950s and the footwear created from it.

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The distinctive platform is not simply a solid mass made by stacking horizontal layers of leather. Instead, Tatehana laminates two layers of leather, each approximately four millimeters thick, to build a raised wall around the perimeter while leaving the interior hollow.

The construction keeps the shoe relatively light while giving it enough strength to support the wearer’s weight, as well as a spring-like flexibility that a solid block would lack. Leather is also used for the internal reinforcement in place of the synthetic materials commonly found in conventional footwear.

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At first glance, Heel-less Shoes can appear almost sculptural. Yet they still support a human body as shoes. What makes that possible is not only the bold silhouette visible from the outside, but a process of experimentation with structure and material that largely remains unseen.

Not Simply Inheriting Tradition, but “Rethinking” It

“Rethink” is the concept Tatehana has placed at the heart of his creative practice. It describes an approach that seeks to generate new value by reconsidering history and culture through a contemporary lens rather than simply inheriting them unchanged.

As one moves through the exhibition, that approach takes many different forms.

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One example is the graphic system known as Genji-kō. Developed from an incense-comparison game, its geometric patterns represent different combinations of fragrances and are associated with chapters of The Tale of Genji, the classical Japanese literary work written in the early 11th century.

Tatehana was initially drawn to the graphic qualities of these patterns. Seeking to understand the culture behind them more deeply, he visited a long-established incense house in Kyoto before developing the motifs into sculpture and printmaking.

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In another work, based on the motif of red arrows, Tatehana translates the principle of tame-nuri, a layered lacquer technique, into contemporary urethane coating.

A fluorescent orange base is covered with translucent red. The depth traditionally produced through multiple layers of lacquer is reconstructed through different materials and modern coating technology.

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The point is not to reproduce a traditional motif or technique exactly as it once existed. Tatehana goes further back, asking what makes a particular expression possible—examining its structure and the thinking behind it before reconsidering it through contemporary materials and technologies.

“Rethink” is therefore not only a theme within Tatehana’s work. It is also a method of making.

From One Pair of Hands to Many

Following the idea of handwork through the exhibition gradually shifts attention away from Tatehana’s hands alone and toward the many people involved in bringing his works into being.

His collaborative Heel-less Shoes with Tokyo workshop Ryukobo are covered in silk kumihimo—the Japanese art of braiding cords from multiple strands—with decorative knots incorporated into the design. Ryukobo has long specialized in traditional braided accessories for kimono, while its collaborations with Tatehana have explored new possibilities for the technique.

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In a project with Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten, a historic Tokyo maker of traditional Japanese drums, Tatehana gave new purpose to drum materials that had remained in storage after failing to meet the standards required for use as musical instruments. Small drums were joined together to create Raiko, a work that evokes the ring of drums carried by Raijin, the thunder deity of Japanese mythology. The official work title is Noritaka Tatehana x Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten Raiko.

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In woodblock printing, collaboration with practitioners of traditional Edo moku-hanga led to Fifty-seven Stations of the Tokaido. The title expands upon the familiar “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido,” associated internationally with Utagawa Hiroshige, by incorporating four additional stations on the route toward Osaka. The project is officially listed in English as Edo-Mokuhanga × Noritaka Tatehana Fifty-seven Stations of the Tokaido.

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For Void Sculpture, a series centered on the Japanese sword, Tatehana collaborated with swordsmith Kunihira Kawachi. Rather than presenting the scabbard itself, he carved acrylic so that the space where the scabbard would exist appears as a void within the transparent block. Official records list the materials as “Japanese sword (Kunihira Kawachi), acrylic.”

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Instead of sculpting an object, Tatehana effectively sculpts the air that would occupy its place. Within transparent acrylic, an absent form acquires a visible outline.

Dissolving the Boundary Between Traditional Craft and Advanced Technology

“Handwork,” as presented in this exhibition, does not refer exclusively to traditional manual techniques.

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In 2015, Tatehana collaborated with Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen for her Fall/Winter 2015–16 collection, using 3D modeling and 3D-printing technology in the creation of footwear.

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For another work, Tatehana underwent a full-body CT scan. His skeletal structure was extracted from the resulting digital data, which then became the basis for a brass casting produced using the metalworking traditions of Takaoka in Toyama Prefecture.

“By bringing advanced technology and traditional craft together, I was able to see my own dead form while I was still alive.”

Medical imaging and digital technology meet casting techniques with a long history. In Tatehana’s work, they are not separated into “new” and “old.” They coexist simply as different technologies capable of giving form to a single idea.

New Work from Joshibi’s Textile Collection

The fact that the exhibition is being held at Joshibi University of Art and Design also opens another dimension of the project.

Since 2019, Tatehana has served as a specially appointed professor in the Craft Course of the university’s Department of Design and Crafts.

The Joshibi University of Art and Design Art Museum holds a particularly extensive textile collection, spanning cultures and periods and including Japanese kosode, an early form of kimono. In this exhibition, works from that collection are presented alongside new pieces Tatehana created in response to them.

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One experiment was inspired by a kimono made using shibori, the Japanese resist-dyeing technique in which areas of fabric are bound, folded, stitched, or otherwise compressed before dyeing.

Tatehana applies the principle to leather: tightly binding it with cotton thread so that the dye cannot penetrate certain areas, then dyeing the material with indigo. A technique traditionally associated with textile is thus transferred to leather, a material central to his practice.

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Tatehana studied yuzen dyeing as a student, a path that eventually led to Heel-less Shoes. Fifteen years later, now teaching at Joshibi, he finds himself once again engaging with a textile collection.

That circular movement through time can itself be seen as another form of “Rethink.”

Uncontrollable Colors That Emerge Beyond 3,000 Colors

The exploration of handwork continues beyond the main galleries and into the lobby, where works and research materials reveal another side of Tatehana’s process.

Among them are color samples created in his studio.

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Tatehana explains that his studio has produced more than 3,000 original color samples for his paintings, each accompanied by its own mixing formula. Before a painting begins, they function almost as tools for testing combinations and balancing colors.

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Nearby, however, a project with artience reverses this relationship with color.

Tatehana has collaborated with the company since its days as Toyo Ink, including work on the precise reproduction of colors in printed materials. For the artience group’s 2027 calendar co-creation project, he turned his attention to surplus ink discarded at the company’s manufacturing plants. artience describes the project as a reexamination of the technologies and craftsmanship it has cultivated over more than 130 years through Tatehana’s concept of “Rethink.”

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Spot-color inks are formulated according to exact recipes for individual companies and products. Yet unused remnants are placed in disposal containers, where reds, blues, silvers, and other colors accumulate in unpredictable layers.

Tatehana lifts these layers out with a spatula and transfers them directly onto the surface of a work.

“I don’t know what color is going to emerge, but that uncertainty becomes part of how the abstract painting is expressed."

A surface that appears blue might reveal yellow underneath. Or the colors may mix until they become black.

Beside a practice in which more than 3,000 recipes have been created to control color with great precision, Tatehana here relinquishes that control and allows chance to enter the work.

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The exhibition also presents “drawdowns,” test applications used by ink technicians to check properties such as color and ink behavior. Samples were gathered from artience facilities across Japan, selected by Tatehana, and reconstructed into an installation resembling a color wheel. artience itself identifies both the waste-ink paintings and drawdowns as works emerging from the calendar co-creation project.

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Color samples from an artist’s studio and those produced by technicians in a factory serve different purposes and emerge from very different working environments. Yet seeing these two kinds of “tools” within the same exhibition expands the meaning of handwork in the contemporary world.

The Many Hands Behind 15 Years of Creation

Looking back over Tatehana’s 15-year practice, his encounter with Lady Gaga through Heel-less Shoes remains one of its major turning points.

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Tatehana says they created more than 25 pairs together over roughly two years soon after his graduation. Yet what emerges from this exhibition is a story that extends beyond an iconic shoe worn by a globally famous performer.

Reflecting on his work with Lady Gaga, Tatehana describes it not as simply receiving a commission and supplying a finished object, but as a process that felt like “climbing the stairs together,” building the work as both careers developed.

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Artist and client. Artist and craftsperson. Traditional craft and advanced technology. Studio and factory.

A work comes into being by moving back and forth across those boundaries.

At the end of the exhibition, a film explores “Rethink,” the concept Tatehana has carried throughout his creative practice. Tatehana is not the only person who appears. The film also turns its attention to craftspeople and collaborators with whom he has worked over the years.

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To look again at the 15 years that began with Heel-less Shoes not simply through the “works,” but through the “hands” that made them, is to see more than the trajectory of a single artist.

It reveals how the hands of craftspeople carrying inherited techniques, technicians researching materials, and collaborators searching together for new methods overlap and connect with one another, eventually taking form as contemporary creation.

Rather than preserving history and culture as something fixed in the past, Tatehana’s practice sets them in motion again: through making, thinking, and reconnecting techniques with different technologies and people.

Now, at the 15th anniversary of his creative practice, “Rethink” seems to suggest more than a way of looking back. It is also an attitude from which the next act of creation can begin.