The Saison Foundation
2024 Grant Awards(April 2024)
TOKYO (April 2024) – The Saison Foundation of Tokyo, Japan, announces grants totaling ¥67
million awarded to the following forty-one individuals and organizations, in addition to the
public relations activities and networking related to the grant programs. All grants are foractivities taking place between April 2024 and March 2025.
Please note that the information below is based on grant applications as of January 22,2024, and is subject to change without notice.

1. Direct Support to Artists
1. Contemporary Theater and Dance: Saison Fellows I / II
Saison Fellows I(24 recipients: ¥36.5 million)

Two-year grant of ¥1 million per year

Newly Selected First-Time Grantees (fiscal 2024–2025)

Kayo Masumi (b. 1994) Hate to Cheek[theater

Kayo Masumi is a Tokyo-based playwright, director, and actor. Their company’s name,
Hate to Cheek, is based on Japanese wordplay: the word for “cheek,” hoppe, sounds
like “hope.” Their work features caricatured portrayals of invisible ruptures between
people through outlandish settings and lighthearted conversations. They create
theater that incorporates anger at the irrational discrimination that arises amidst
hopelessly unchanging situations, and quiet hope for the future. Masumi wasshortlisted for the Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2023 for In the Glare of Monsters.
In 2024, they will revive a previous play and work toward staging a new piece in January 2025 as well as
continuing to hold workshops throughout the year. https://hatetocheek.wixsite.com/hatetocheek

Takuya Takemoto (b. 1990)

p[performance

Takuya Takemoto is a Tokyo-based performance artist who performs, directs, andchoreographs. His performances involve subtle movements and perception, rooted in
an inquiry into what it means for a person to stand in front of another in the performing
arts. In addition to performances at theater venues, he has staged solo performances
almost daily since 2017, with or without an audience. These performances are always
open to anyone who wishes to see them, showing not only finished pieces but a
Photo: Sayuri Murooka

constantly evolving process. His recent output includes staging work and participating

in exchanges in Kyoto, Paris, and other locations. In 2024, Takemoto plans to stage work at New York
University, in the United Kingdom as part of Japan-Britain Contemporary Theater Exchange, and in Germany
at Nippon Performance Night. https://takuyatakemoto.com/

The Saison Foundation: 4F Kyobashi Yamamoto Bldg 3-12-7 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku Tokyo 104-0031, Japan
Tel: +81 3 3535 5566 Fax: +81 3 3535 5565 Email: foundation@saison.or.jp Website: https://www.saison.or.jp/

Newly Selected Second-Time Grantees (fiscal 2024–2025)

Yuri Yamada (b. 1992) ZEITAKU BINBOU[theater

Yuri Yamada is a Tokyo-based writer, director, and actor who founded ZEITAKU
BINBOU in 2012. She is known for her portrayals of a world that reflects thezeitgeist and social distortions in wildly imaginative, highly diverse, and popinflected ways. Her wide-ranging output includes acting in plays, films, andcommercials as well as writing articles for literary magazines, novels, scripts for TV
dramas, and directing for TV. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, she aspires to
Photo: Kengo Kawatsura

create work that various kinds of audience can enjoy. She was nominated for the
Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2017 and 2019. In 2024, Yamada plans to continue

exploring new acting styles for her company as well as research, write, and stage a new work in December at
Theatre Tram. https://zeitakubinbou.com/

Ayaka Nakama (b. 1992)[danceAyaka Nakama is a Hyogo-based dancer. Starting her career as a dancer in various
dance, theater, and performance productions, she has recently pursued her own
practice, which she creates through a process of wide-ranging research that relies on
memories of people and place. Seeking out phenomena impossible to call anything but
dance, she makes “mechanisms” for sharing the moments when such phenomena arise
with others. She explores ways to expand the possibilities and remit of the profession
Photo: Bea Borgers.

of dancer, such as by opening a performance and meeting space called house next doorin Shin-Nagata, Kobe, in April 2024. In 2024, Nakama plans to stage Freeway Dance in Austria and aninternational co-production in Indonesia. https://ayakanakama.wixsite.com/official

Reisa Shimojima (b. 1992) KEDAGORO

dance

Reisa Shimojima is a Tokyo-based choreographer, director, and dancer who founded
the dance company KEDAGORO in 2013. Based on the principle that dance is a meansof exploring the world, she employs dance as a means of thinking about society andengages in a practice applying body-centric approaches to frameworks of topical social
issues, historical incidents, and controversies about artistic activities. Working in both
Japan and overseas, she endeavors to use dance as a way of taking up unanswered
Photo: Mizuki Satosocial questions and reflecting with others on the complexities of humankind that elude

norms and logic. She also aspires to break down people’s indifference through forms of expression that change
their perception of the world. Shimojima’s recent work includes many international collaborations, pursuingthrough experiences of culture clash what it means to be Japanese and what makes humans human. In 2024,
her plans include a co-production with a contemporary dance company in South Korea as well as staging a
new work. https://www.kedagoro.com/

Jang-Chi (b. 1983) OLTA

performance

The Tokyo-based artist and director Jang-Chi founded OLTA in 2009. Hisinterdisciplinary practice encompasses installation, moving image, performance,
games, theater, and more. His recent work has explored a negotiation with theinstitutions of the visual and performing arts, developing a transdisciplinary body art
that builds on sociological and folkloristic fieldwork. His work to date has dealt withthe relationship between industry and the city during modernization, and aspects of2

society and history that cannot be described uniformly in terms of race and gender. He depicts collective acts
in a community and the communication that unfolds therein, questioning fundamental human cravings anddesires. In 2024, Jang-Chi plans to take part in a research residency in Taipei and to exhibit visual art.
https://olta.jp/

Newly Selected Third-Time Grantees (fiscal 2024–2025)

Shinichi Anasako (b. 1990) egonaku[theaterShinichi Anasako is a playwright and director based in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, whofounded egonaku in 2012. His work aims to create new theater in a regional communitythat is relevant nationally and internationally. His work is characterized by a focus on
the personal and ordinary and his attempts to find the ways of the world, rooted in
playwriting that incorporates lyrics and directing that utilizes musical elements inspeech and structure. In 2018, Anasako started an ongoing project at Miyako, Iwate. In
2024, he plans to expand his base of operations to include Kanto, and tour a new workto Kyoto and Yokohama. http://buru-egonaku.com/

Yuta Hagiwara (b. 1983) Kamome Machine[theater

The Tokyo-based director Yuta Hagiwara founded Kamome Machine in 2007. By
antagonizing the individual body with its surrounding problems, he presents conceptsof the public that diverge from existing connotations. Though his previous plays dealt
with political and social issues like the Fukushima nuclear disaster and Japaneseconstitution, his recent work (such as a production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Daysand a “telephone theater” project in which the audience experiences a one-to-one
Photo: Rakutaro Ogiwara

performance by an actor by telephone) has expanded the problematics he explores tothe nature of the public that emerges from relationships between individuals. In 2024,

Hagiwara will continue his research in the Nanjing Massacre, and also undertake a research-based residency
at a nursing home for the elderly. https://www.kamomemachine.com/

Continuing Grants (fiscal 2023–2024)

Shuntaro Matsubara (b. 1988) grass[theater

A Kyoto-based playwright and novelist, Shuntaro Matsubara is unusual in theJapanese theater world in that he focuses solely on writing plays and does not direct.
His work is characterized by its highly rhythmical style. He has worked with directors
and actors to stage numerous productions. In 2022, Matsubara founded grass, whichaspires to create theater without directors, and engages with a performance practicebased on direct collaboration between the playwright and actors. In addition to plays,
Photo: Hisashi Matsumoto

his wide-ranging literary output includes novels and essays. Matsubara searches for

new ways to encounter audiences through writing and staging texts in various formats. In 2019, YAMAYAMA(I Would Prefer Not To) won the Kishida Kunio Drama Award. In 2024, Matsubara will release a new play,
Impossible Gag. http://matsubarashuntaro.com/

3

Keiko Yamaguchi (b. 1986) BRDG

[theater

The Kyoto-based theater artist and actor Keiko Yamaguchi started working under thename BRDG in 2011. Her experience of studying theater in the United Kingdom led
her to position creating work with collaborators from different cultures and languages
as a central facet of her practice. Following her return to Japan, she has pursued an
ongoing model of international co-production by undertaking interviews and creative
collaboration with people in Kyoto with foreign heritage. She currently works at a
Photo: Koichiro Kojima

community cafe while building links between theater and everyday life. Yamaguchi isalso active as an actor, interpreter, and assistant director at theater festivals and international projects. She
served as facilitator at Tokyo Festival Farm Camp from 2021 to 2023. In 2024, Yamaguchi plans to continue
her theater workshops at educational institutions and community cafes as well as stage her 2023 work Sari

Sali in Manila and a new play in Budapest based on her short story collection My Husband. https://brdging.tumblr.com/

Midori Kurata (b. 1987) akakilike

dance

Midori Kurata is a Kyoto-based director, choreographer, and dancer. Confronting bothherself and others on the occasion of creating each work, she seeks out the possibilities
of dance by using the stage structure to build up the phenomena that arise there as
fiction. Since 2016, she has led the group akakilike, comprising only herself and nonperformers. In its work, akakilike aspires to engage with each production with actors
and non-actors all on an equal footing. Kurata collaborates not only with professional
dancers and actors, but also drug rehabilitation center patients and senior citizens incommunities with complex histories. With all such collaborators, she seeks to bring out their true appeal andtransform that into a stage performance. Instead of narrative, the temporality and spatiality woven by theperformers’ bodies alone form, for Kurata, the true presence of individuals, and enable the audience to witness
the reality that people are “there” at a resolution different from that of ordinary life. In 2024, Kurata plans toserve in her role as Matsumoto Performing Arts Centre dance producer as well as stage a new dance work.
https://akakilike.jimdofree.com/

Ayane Nakagawa (b. 1991) Suichu-megane∞dance

Based in Tokyo, Ayane Nakagawa is a director, choreographer, and dancer. Instead ofdance purely for art’s sake, she aspires to find a creative role for dance within theworkings of society through the independent performances and collaborations sheplans and produces. Her recent work my choice, my body, was highly acclaimed for its
attempt to connect traditional folk performing arts and aesthetics with contemporary
dance contexts. At Yokohama Dance Collection 2021 Competition I, Nakagawa won the
Photo: Kazuaki Koyama

Jury Prize, French Embassy in Japan – Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels for

Young Choreographers, and Architanz Artist Support Award. In 2024, Nakagawa will stage a preview of a newwork, Shiki, at Yokohama Dance Collection as her prize winner performance, followed by a full performance.
She will also stage a revival of my choice, my body,. https://www.suichumegane.com/

4Nanako Matsumoto (b. 1992) team chiipro

dance

Nanako Matsumoto is a Tokyo-based performer, dance artist, and choreographer. Her
artistic practice employs dance as a means of engaging critically with the body. Her
recent output includes dance works presented in the form of lecture performances thatinterweave text readings and dance based on careful research. Objectifying anddealing critically with the body at the intersection of various corporeal contexts, shecreates sites for dance to emerge. She staged work at Kyoto Experiment in both 2021
Photo: Shingo Kanagawa

and 2022. Her hysteria project (2023) saw her conduct research about how our conceptof the female body is socially constructed with a focus on moving image, and which she then crystallized into
a performance. In 2024, Matsumoto will collaborate with Anchi Lin (Ciwas Tahos) on a project, put on a revivalof Kyoto Imaginary Waltz, and stage a preview of a new work, Kappa Man. https://www.chiipro.net/

Ayano Yokoyama (b. 1987) lal banshees

dance

Ayano Yokoyama is a Tokyo-based choreographer, dancer, and artistic director of lalbanshees. In her practice, she explores original forms of movement with a focus on
sensation. Rooted in the sense of terroir acquired from growing up in Nagano
surrounded by a rich natural environment, she extracts the overlooked and neglected
aspects of reality in fantastical ways, and envisions contemporary problems andsensations, reality and unreality, and other people, pasts, and futures she does not
know. Known for her scenically aware use of space and choreography that is consciousof elaborate connections with sound, she delves into the sense of a site to bring out, through dance, momentsthat are unique to dance and which seem to flow out unintentionally. Yokoyama also composes the music anddoes the stage design for all her productions. In 2022, she was invited to present her work at the Aerowaves
Spring Forward Festival. In 2024, Yokoyama will develop her 2022 work YU-KEI into a mixed-media
performance. http://www.yokoyamanaa.com/

Akira Nakazawa (b. 1992) Ayaka Ono Akira Nakazawa Spacenotblankperformance

Akira Nakazawa is a theater maker and choreographer who works with Ayaka Ono.
He is based in Tokyo, where he regularly stages work as well as Kyoto and Kanagawa.
His current practice involves not only a search for an original style of performance, but
a vicarious experience of the processes conceived by past artists, and by seeking to passthat on to future practitioners, he attempts to link up the value of performing and rolesin the creative process with history and reality, and to create a new dramaturgy.
Photo: Dan Åke Carlsson

Aiming to reform the substructure of the performing arts in terms of creativeenvironment, timescale, budgets, and personnel, he aspires to shape new role models for show business. At
Yokohama Dance Collection 2022 Competition I, he and Ono won the Prize of the French Embassy in Japan –Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels for Young Choreographers. In 2024, Nakazawa will take part in a
residency at the Centre national de la dance in France as well as direct and perform Alice in Wonderlight.
https://spacenotblank.com/

5Saison Fellows II
Newly Selected Grantees (fiscal 2024–2027)¥1 million per year

Kumiko Ueda (b. 1979) projectumï

[theater

Kumiko Ueda is a Nara- and Tokyo-based playwright and director. In March 2024, shefounded projectumï with the aim of creating critically engaged contemporary theaterthat reaches a wide audience. A former member of the Takarazuka Revue, she left thecompany to pursue a more personal mode of practice instead of entertainment. Her work
harnesses her skills with performing in large spaces and comprehensibly conveying
complex concepts, focusing on what a general audience finds interesting, and aiming to
Photo: matron2023

create work that bridges the avant-garde and entertainment. Her primary concern isdeveloping safe collaboration with others. In 2024, Ueda will stage Project Pneuma (Kinosaki International
Arts Center), contrasting human temporality with that of insect and microbe life, as well as a production withher company called Feast of Solitude.

http://www.kumikoueda.com/

Newly Selected Grantee (fiscal 2024–2026)¥2.5 million per year

Kishodai Kageyama (b. 1988) NORUHA[theater

Kishodai Kageyama is a Tokyo-based playwright and director. His company, NORUHA,
aspires to create performing arts that result from respecting everyone involved in a
production and enabling them to act in ways that are true to themselves. In 2021,
Kageyama founded a joint studio called NORUBA with several other artists. It serves asa place for artists and others involved in making the performing arts to collaboratesmoothly through their creative practices. Known for presenting theatrical experiences
Photo: Arata Minothat incorporate communication with audiences before and after a performance,

Kageyama’s wide-ranging activities include holding events to accompany performances and publishingbooklets. In 2017, he won the AAF Playwriting Prize. In 2024, he plans to hold the NEO Hyogen Festival in
the Nishiogu area of Tokyo, and stage performances with NORUHA. https://noruha.net/

Rom Hashimoto (b. 1995)

performance

The Tokyo-based director, choreographer, and curator Rom Hashimoto’s work explores
minority politics. Employing conceptual approaches, their highly contemporary
performance practice incorporates aspects of pop and street culture. With a firmly
developed aesthetic running through all the elements that make up their work, they draw
on deep compositional planning that dynamically harnesses the mechanics of a theater
space, and collage techniques for delving into a theme in multifaceted ways, forming astyle that presents new assumptions. Following recent collaboration with people from the fashion industry as
well as SLOW CIRCUS, a social circus company, Hashimoto is engaged in a transdisciplinary practice that
goes beyond conventional frameworks of medium and genre. They won the Outstanding New Artist Prize at
Yokohama Dance Collection 2020. In 2024, they plan to conduct research on colonialism in Okinawa andHokkaido, and stage a production at Setagaya Public Theater. https://www.romance-hashimoto.com

6

Continuing Grants (fiscal 2023–2026)¥2 million per year

Pink No. 3 (b. 1982) Momochi no sekai[theater

The Kyoto-based Pink No. 3 is a playwright and director. A former undertaker, hefounded Momochi no sekai in 2015. His work is known for blurring the line between theliving and the dead, and for its unforgiving portrayal of the darker side of humanity andsociety. Recent output includes Desert Sea (2020), Water Lily (2021), and the courtroom
drama Terror (2022), all of which featured sign language. Treating sign language as aform of body art, his work has gained attention for reinterpreting directing in ways that
Photo: chanmi

transcend conventional understandings of accessibility. He aspires to create theaterthat is truly open to all audiences, such as through using deaf actors and incorporating techniques to ensure
accessibility, and engages in new efforts in this vein. In 2024, Pink No. 3 will present two new works.
https://momochinosekai.tumblr.com/

Yohei Hosokawa (b. 1978) horobite[theaterBased in Tokyo, Yohei Hosokawa is a playwright, director, and actor. He has served as
artistic director of the theater company horobite since 2010. His work theatrically andindirectly relates the harsh, hopeless predicament into which we have fallen. He shifts
styles as befits each work, from Hyper-Colloquial Theater to Theater of the Absurd,
examining violence or the people who fall between the gaps of social structures, andemphasizing the process of searching for language while conducting careful research
Photo: Yohei Hosokawa

for his work. Premised on the lack of any need to incorporate cause and effect into a

narrative or appeal to an audience emotionally, his work is an attempt to maintain a constantly dynamic andchanging state. In 2024, Hosokawa will revive a previous work as well present a work-in-progress performanceof a new piece at Morishita Studio. https://horobite.com/

Newly Selected Grantee (fiscal 2023–2025)¥2.5 million per year

Kitamari (b. 1983) DANCE COMPANY KIKIKIKIKIKI

dance

The choreographer Kitamari is based in Kyoto and Hokkaido. She is artistic director ofthe dance company KIKIKIKIKIKI, which she founded in 2003 and has staged
numerous performances since. In 2018, she switched to a project-oriented style in which
she brings together a team for each work. Originally in Kyoto, she relocated to
Hokkaido in summer 2022 and now works between two bases. Her wide-ranging,
Design: Takashi Tsujitransdisciplinary practice actively embraces other fields, such as her project tochoreograph all the symphonies of the composer Gustav Mahler ongoing since 2016 anda series of dance adaptations of the plays of dramatist Shogo Ota since 2021. In 2016, Kitamari won the New
Artist Award at the Agency for Cultural Affairs National Arts Festival. In 2022, she staged her work at the
HOTPOT East Asia Dance Platform. In 2024, she will present her adaptation of The Tale of Komachi Told by

the Wind at the Oe Noh Theater in Kyoto.
https://ki6dance.jimdofree.com/

7

Continuing Grants (fiscal 2022–2024)¥3 million per year

Suguru Yamamoto (b. 1987) Theater Collective HANCHU-YUEI[theater

The Tokyo-based playwright and director Suguru Yamamoto founded Theater
Collective HANCHU-YUEI in 2007. With a focus on the artistic elements he gleaned
from the cinema, literature, music, and visual art during his childhood, he constructs atheatrical world that vividly reflects contemporary information society whose ethics are
rapidly changing. His wide-ranging practice encompasses performances for children
and workshops for young people and welfare facilities. Yamamoto actively engages in
Photo: Yukitaka Amamiya

staging performances in Asia and North America as well as international co-

productions, providing scripts and networking, and working to expand his field of activities beyond the bordersof Japan. In 2014, he won Best Script and Best Play at the Bangkok Theatre Festival. In 2019, he studied in
New York as an Asian Cultural Council 2018 grantee. In 2022, he won the Kishida Kunio Drama Award. In
2024, Yamamoto plans to revive a previous production and write a new work.
https://www.hanchuyuei2017.com/ https://note.com/suguru_2/

Pijin Neji (b. 1980) neji&co.

dance

Pijin Neji is a Kyoto-based dancer and choreographer. His solo dance work is known fortaking a microscopic view of his own body, while his choreography treats dancers’ bodies
materially. In 2020, he founded the company neji&co. to develop a choreographic
practice for gaining hope for the future, and relocated to Kyoto. His work emphasizes
creating a performing arts time span and space within a theater venue that synthesizes,
in the form of a performance, the body language and gestures of dance that are lost ina moment of aimless movement. He won the Yokohama Dance Collection 2011 Jury
Prize and the F/T Award for his entry in the F/T Emerging Artists Program at Festival/Tokyo 2011. In 2016,he was the curator of the Our Masters Tatsumi Hijikata program at the Asian Arts Theatre in Gwangju, South
Korea. In 2024, Neji will stage work at HOTPOT. http://nejiandco.com/

Continuing Grants (fiscal 2021–2024)¥3 million per year

Megumi Kamimura (b. 1977) Project YUNGURA

dance

The Tokyo-based choreographer and dancer Megumi Kamimura began staging solo
work in 2004. Based on the premise that the body exists materially yet is alive forfundamentally no reason, her work observes human forms and the complexity ofhuman movement, which she reconstructs from various perspectives. In her recent
work, Kamimura has sought to separate movement from the body by recording it as ascore, enabling creative collaborations in a team through that score. While running her
Photo: bozzo

own studio, she observes the new rules that emerge among people, and develops fresh

networks for practitioners. Kamimura staged a work at Festival/Tokyo 2019. In 2024, she will present a Project
YUNGURA work as well as the fourth in her recent The Record of Useless Time series.
http://kamimuramegumi.info/8

2. Contemporary Theater and Dance: Sabbatical Program

2 recipients: ¥2 million

This program awards grants up to ¥1 million to individual artists who wish to travel abroadand encounter intercultural experiences. Applicants must have: (a) a working base in Japan;(b) more than ten years of professional working experience in one of the following
occupations: playwriting, directing, or choreography; and (c) plans to travel abroad for morethan one month.

Nen Ishihara (theater)
A journey of empowerment by United States and European theater and feminism

Ruri Mito (dance)
Trip to Reconfirm That Living Is Dancing

92. Partnership Programs
This category includes programs in which The Saison Foundation provides up to three yearsof support to individuals and organizations whose aims are to improve the infrastructure ofcontemporary performing arts in Japan or to organize international exchange projects andthus enhance the visibility of Japanese performing arts around the world.

1. Contemporary Theater and Dance: Creative Environment Innovation Program
Grants and the use of studios and guest rooms are awarded to individuals and organizations
conducting projects aimed at improving the infrastructure of contemporary performing arts inJapan.
4 recipients: ¥7.6 million
Organization / Representative
Newly Selected Grants

precog co., LTD. / Akane Nakamura
Opening Up the Future Possibilities of the Performing Arts in Inclusive Societies
Against a backdrop of growing interest in social inclusion and sustainability, the creative
involvement of minorities in the performing arts opens up new possibilities for the industry.
Individuals working in the performing arts will discuss this issue and verbalize the values of theiractivities. The project will hold talks and study groups, and publish reports.
April 2024–March 2025
https://precog-jp.net
Tokyo, online¥2 million, Morishita StudioContinuing Grants (fiscal 2023– )Specified Nonprofit Corporation Explat / Yuko Uematsu
Battery Art Manager Mentorship Program Phase 3This is a mentorship project for producers in the performing arts. It will build a mutual support
network for production staff.
April 2024–March 2025
https://battery-am.studio.site
Tokyo, online¥2 million

Setouchi Circus Factory / Michiko Tanaka
Creating a Japanese Contemporary Circus Network and Connections with
International Networks
This project will launch a Japanese contemporary circus network and serve as a platform forholding showcases and project presentations, in addition to forming partnerships with overseas
networks.
April 2024–March 202510

https://scf.or.jp/en/network-e
Kanagawa, Karlsruhe (Germany), Aix-en-Provence (France), Tàrrega (Spain)¥1.6 million Morishita StudioContinuing Grants (fiscal 2022– )The Smaller Theatre Initiative / Masashi Nomura
Creative Local Environments in Partnership with Small Private Theaters
The Smaller Theatre Initiative will organize the Theater Homestay Project (which offers
opportunities for artists to stay at theaters outside their usual base), create a guidebook for fringeand small theaters across Japan, hold the 7th Smaller Theatre Initiative Conference, and engage
in discussions toward developing partnerships among small-scale theater venues.
April 2024–March 2025
https://shogekijo-network.jp
Japan¥2 million

2. Contemporary Theater and Dance: International Projects Support Program
1) International Projects Support ProgramThis program is designed to support long-term international projects by contemporary
Japanese theater or dance artists/companies lasting more than two years until completion.
7 recipients: ¥9.7 million (with use of studio and guest room facilities at Morishita Studio)
Newly Selected Grants

General Incorporated Association Theater and Arts UEDA / Hirofumi Arai
India-Japan International Co-Production Hagoromo Project by Sahyande Theatre & Sai
no Tsuno
This project is an international co-production exploring swan maiden (hagoromo) traditions invarious parts of the world. Directed by Sankar Venkateswaran and performed by Mikari and
Kapila Venu, the participants will undertake a residency at Sahyande Theatre in the Indian stateof Kerala and present a work-in-progress performance.
February–March 2025
Kerala (India)¥1.4 million

mum&gypsy. LCC / Kana Hayashi
mum&gypsy New International Co-Production Chair / IL POSTO
Chair / IL POSTO is a new international co-production by Takahiro Fujita in collaboration withyoung performers in Italy, as part of mum&gypsy’s partnership with the Italian festival Fabbrica
Europa ongoing since 2013.
August–September 2024
Tokyo, Hyogo, Kagawa
11¥1.5 million, Morishita Studio

Body Arts Laboratory / Kota Yamazaki
Footnote New Zealand Dance × Kota Yamazaki Dance Project Thin Paper, Autonomy of
Synapse, Nomads and Tokyo [-ing]
The internationally active choreographer Kota Yamazaki will collaborate with Footnote New
Zealand Dance to create a new work and stage it in Japan. In fiscal 2025 and 2026, theproduction will go on a multi-city tour in New Zealand and the United States (Arizona, New
Mexico, New York).
July–October 2024
Wellington, Tokyo, Aichi¥1.5 million, Morishita StudioContinuing Grants

General Incorporated Association Q / Satoko Ichihara
Yoroboshi: The Weakling European Tour
Commissioned for and premiered at Theater der Welt 2023, Yoroboshi: The Weakling is based on
the famous bunraku puppet play. It will go on a multi-city tour in Europe.
November 2024
Paris, Antwerp, Rotterdam¥1.5 million, Morishita Studio

General Incorporated Association Kyoto Experiment / Yoko Kawasaki
Kyoto Experiment × For What Theatre Juggle ＆ Hide (Seven Whatchamacallits in
Search of a Director)
This is a co-production by the Japanese performing arts festival Kyoto Experiment and For What
Theatre, a company led by the Thai-based director Wichaya Artamat. Following its world
premiere at Kyoto Experiment 2023, the production will be staged in Bangkok.
March 2025
Bangkok¥1 million

Belle Santos
MOURNING TIME
This project is a collaboration between performance maker Belle Santos and dancer,
choreographer, and singer Emi Ogura. Santos and Ogura will explore the theme of mourning
rituals, undertaking research into different ways to overcome the various kinds of sorrow, loss,
and trauma people experience in life, and creating a fictional space where audiences experience
those personal transformations. The collaborators will take part in a residency in Germany andthen premiere the work in Kyoto.

12

October 2024–March 2025
Tokyo, Kyoto, Berlin¥1.4 million, Morishita Studio

Chiharu Shinoda
Research and Creation: RUWATAN and MAYOKE
This project is a collaboration between director Chiharu Shinoda and Yogyakarta-based
community space Balai Budaya Minomartani. Three years in the making, Mayokage will bestaged to coincide with Yokohama International Performing Arts Meeting, helping to publicize theproduction among performing arts professionals and boost opportunities for future tours.
April–December 2024
Tokyo, Kanagawa¥1.4 million, Morishita Studio2) Artistic Exchange Project Program (Designated Fund Program)Grants and other awards are given to activities and projects by nonprofit organizations outsideof Japan that have an ongoing relationship with The Saison Foundation with the aim ofmaking Japanese culture and art better known in their respective countries and areas. (Thisis a designated fund program; applications are not publicly invited.)

Asian Cultural Council
Asian Cultural Council Japan Grant Program: ACC Saison Foundation Fellows
This grant supports the thirty-fifth year of the Asian Cultural Council’s Japan Program, which
awards fellowships to Japanese artists, scholars, and specialists who wish to undertake creative
work, research, or study in the United States, and to their American counterparts coming to Japan.
¥6 million, Morishita Studio13

3. Contribution Program: Research Grants for Activating the Next Generation of
Artistic Creativity
This grant program was launched in 2020. It supports research and survey activities aiming
to propose policies for activating the next generation of artistic creativity.
1 recipient: ¥1 million

associations Inc. / Risei Sato
Association for Region, Culture, Institution Fundamentals of Intermediary: Concept
and History
This project will process, elucidate, and discuss debates surrounding art nonprofits as well as thework of cultural policy scholar Yasuo Ito as research that facilitates clues for understanding theprinciples of intermediary support work and its historical background.
April 2024–March 2025
Tokyo, Okinawa, online¥1 million

4. Contemporary Theater and Dance: Flight Grants (Japan-Based Applicants)
This program provides grants to those in Japan in immediate need of funds to travel abroad.
Japan-based artists based are eligible to apply for grants through the foundation’s website inJapanese.
¥1.2 million

5. Contemporary Theater and Dance: Saison Artist in Residence
1. Pilot Program: Supporting Overseas ResearchThis program supports research projects undertaken at overseas artist residencies andcultural institutions or venues with the aim of boosting the international activities of artists,
producers, technicians, and others expected to play leading roles in future international
exchange in the fields of contemporary theater and dance.
2 recipients / ¥1 million

Mariko Tsukaguchi
Research on Performing Arts Producer Networks
This project will conduct research with performing arts producers and related networks in Taiwan
to determine the post-COVID state of international networks. It will also make preparations forholding an international ON-PAM conference in Taiwan.
August 2024
Taipei¥500,00014

Yu Okamoto
Untangle
Based on OBEY to Supreme, a work that Yu Okamoto conceived during a residency in France in
2022, this project will undertake research exploring the possibilities of liberation throughcontemporary dance and body art. Okamoto will participate in a residency at TJP - Centre
Dramatique National Strasbourg - Grand Est.
March 2025
Strasbourg¥500,000

2. Visiting Fellows
In order to expand overseas networks for contemporary theater and dance as well as promotemutual understanding, the foundation invites overseas artists and arts managers expected toplay important future roles to visit Japan and stay at Morishita Studio’s guest rooms.

3. Overseas AIR Participants
The foundation sends Japan-based artists to participate in residency programs overseas tobetter understand and discover the circumstances, contexts, and appeals of contemporary
theater and dance outside Japan. For Japanese artists expected to play leading future roles in
the performing arts, the foundation offers opportunities to take part in foreign AIR schemeswith the aim of growing international networks for contemporary theater and dance, andadvancing mutual understanding. The program covers travel costs, per diem, and production
costs.

6. Public Relations and Networking Related to the Grant Programs
The foundation undertakes public relations activities to introduce its grant programs, grantrecipients, and their outputs, as well as networking to improve its grant programs15

We would like to express our deep gratitude to the following corporations and individuals fortheir support.
Legal Entity Supporters
Saison Asset Management Co., Ltd.
Parco Co., Ltd.
Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd.
Private Donors
Kensaku Fukui
Sachio Ichimura
Megumi Nakamura
Shinji Ono
Rina Tanaka
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto
Anonymous (1 person)

16