Akiko Yano

Dr Akiko Yano is the Mitsubishi Corporation Curator (Japanese Collections) in the Department of Asia of the British Museum (BM). Born and educated in Japan, she completed her BA (International Relations) at Tsuda College, Tokyo, and MA and PhD (Japanese Art History) at Keio University, Tokyo, with a thesis on 16th-century Kano school screen paintings.

As a PhD candidate, she received a Handa Fellowship for one year at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, which was followed by an AHRB research assistant position at SOAS University of London in the SOAS-BM co-project for the special exhibition at the BM Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage: 1780-1830 (2005). After completing her PhD in 2008, she worked for another SOAS-BM special exhibition project for Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (2013) as a Leverhulme Research Fellow.

Having joined the BM in 2015, she was a member of the curatorial team for the special exhibition Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave (2017), the renewal of the Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries (2018) and a display Nara: Sacred Images from Early Japan (2019). She is leading a major three-year international research project between the UK and Japan, co-funded by UKRI and JSPS, about ‘salon culture’ in Kyoto and Osaka in the 19th century. The project so far has produced a special display City Life and Salon Culture in Kyoto and Osaka, 1770-1900 (2024-25) at the BM and an accompanying book (editor and co-author) Salon Culture in Japan: Making Art, 1750-1900 (British Museum Press, 2024).

She has published articles in academic journals and co-authored books and catalogues as part of the exhibition projects named above, as well as writes a bi-monthly column in a Japanese anject so far has produced a special display City Life and Salon Culture in Kyoto and Osaka, 1770-1900 (2024-25) at the BM and an accompanying book (editor and co-author) Salon Culture in Japan: Making Art, 1750-1900 (British Museum Press, 2024).

She has published articles in academic journals and co-authored books and catalogues as part of the exhibition projects named above, as well as writes a bi-monthly column in a Japanese antique magazine Me no me (Me no me Co. Ltd.), and gives lectures in the SOAS Asian Art diploma course.