I — THE ARTIST

The Birth of an Artist

At the age of fourteen, she discovered the works of Ogata Kōrin in an art book in her family’s library. She had not yet even heard the word Rimpa. Yet the encounter moved her so deeply that, without a shadow of doubt, she knew at what she would devote her life.

To bring the spirit of this art back to life in her own time.

At Kyoto University of Education, she specialized in Japanese painting, Nihonga, within a fine arts programme devoted to both artistic creation and education. To create art and to pass beauty on to future generations: these two paths would gradually become one mission, guiding her throughout her life.

During her university years, a professor urged her to anticipate a future in which computers would be capable of creating, decades before that future would arrive.

What, then, could human beings create that machines could not?

It was this question that led her to gold leaf.

A metal beaten to an extraordinary thinness of approximately one ten-thousandth of a millimetre. Its appearance changes constantly with the light, responding to even the slightest movement of the hand that touches it. Above all, she was deeply captivated by its sublime radiance, imbued with a sense of the sacred.

In its delicacy and beauty, she discovered the possibilities of creation born from human sensitivity and skill.

From then on, gold leaf became far more than a traditional material. It became the very heart of her artistic expression, a way of continually exploring the relationship between future technologies and human creativity.

In 1979, she was selected as one of just 45 students from Japan’s national universities for a Japanese government scholarship programme designed to nurture internationally engaged talent for the country’s future. Twenty-two were sent to the United States and twenty-three to Europe.

She passed the entrance examination for her chosen institution, the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Determined to master a traditional European painting technique, she specialized in fresco.

Under the guidance of Professor Albert Le Normand, she conceived and completed a monumental fresco measuring twelve metres wide and three metres high.

For her, learning traditional techniques was never about repeating the past. It was about creating new techniques and forms of expression for her own time.

From Nihonga, she learned the language of metal leaf and line; from fresco, the scale of the wall. Through the physical practice of both traditions, they gradually became one artistic language — gold resonating on an architectural scale.

In 2007, she became a member of the Monaco National Committee of the International Association of Art (AIAP/UNESCO). In 2009, she presented an exhibition entitled 21st-Century Rimpa at the Committee’s exhibition space.

In 2010, at the Musée départemental des Arts asiatiques de Nice, her solo exhibition RIMPA MODERN de Yoko Grandsagne proclaimed the arrival of Rimpa in the 21st century. The Consul General of Japan in Marseilles delivered an address at the opening, and the exhibition extended beyond its original dates, and ran for approximately nine months.

Her diptych IRIS (260 × 195 cm) entered the permanent museum’s collection that year and has remained on display ever since.

Her triptych JARDIN ZEN (390 × 195 cm), first presented at the same exhibition, was subsequently exhibited in GOLD at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna in 2012.

The Belvedere’s GOLD catalogue placed her IRIS within an artistic lineage extending from Ogata Kōrin’s Irises to Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, himself influenced by Japanese art.

Her triptych Mer et Soleil Levant (390 × 195 cm) is on permanent display at the Yacht Club de Monaco.

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II — HAUTE COUTURE

Rimpa to Be Worn

In 1983, she was appointed Stylist-Designer of Haute Couture accessories at Christian Dior in Paris, working under Marc Bohan. She continued designing accessories until 1989. She is the only Japanese person ever to have held this position.

Rimpa was never an art confined to folding screens. Kōrin was born into a family of Kyoto textile merchants, and his designs lived on in kimono, lacquerware and fans.

Through her creative work at Dior, she deepened her exploration of how art could become part of the human body and everyday life.

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III — A VIEW ON THE WORLD

An Artist’s Eye on the World

From 1991 to 1993, she helped establish the Paris operation of Fuji Television’s FNN WORLD UPLINK, a nationally broadcast morning programme connecting Tokyo, Paris and New York through live transmissions. Working alongside its then chief director, Mr. Hyūga, she led the reporting and filming teams in Paris.

She interviewed Jacques Chirac, then Mayor of Paris and later President of France, as well as former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. She produced more than 110 television reports, broadcast nationwide in Japan.

Art does not exist apart from the world. It responds to the world.

The artist’s eye continued to guide her, even in the midst of reporting and filming.

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IV — ART AT THE SERVICE OF HUMANITY

Art for Humanity

In 2011, following the Great East Japan Earthquake, she conceived and proposed a charity gala at the Yacht Club de Monaco to support the victims.

Although the Club had previously maintained a policy of not organizing fundraising events for charitable causes, it made an exceptional decision to hold the gala.

She raised relief funds through the sale of her own artworks and received a public expression of gratitude from H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco at the event.

ART AS PEACE.

PEACE AS ART.

It was already an act before it became a philosophy.

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V — THE ART OF LIVING

Life as Art

Soon after completing her university studies, she returned to Paris, where she started a family and raised her daughter.

Motherhood, too, was a form of creation for her. To nurture love, beauty and respect for the preciousness of life was, alike creating art, a way of nurturing the future of humanity.

Her life between Paris and Nice, in the South of France, became a continuous practice of making life itself an art.

The years she spent looking at Japan from abroad deepened within her an appreciation of the Japanese spirit, which has long placed beauty at the heart of life.

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MEDITATION

Meditation

Meditation has been part of her daily life since childhood.

Her lifelong exploration of human existence and consciousness runs beneath everything she creates and the way she lives.

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To live beautifully is not merely to cultivate outward appearances. It is to look within oneself, to recognize the preciousness of life, to discover beauty in our relationships with others — and to live accordingly.

SHARING THE EXPERIENCE

Sharing the Experience

For her, art exists to help human beings live richer and happier lives.

Science and philosophy, medicine and food, economics and even AI should ultimately serve the same purpose.

Just as Kōrin transformed clothing and everyday objects into art, and the Japanese tea ceremony transformed a simple bowl of tea into an artistic experience, everything can become art — depending on how we approach it, and how we live.

Her exploration also finds expression through words, shared with others.

In June 2017, she was invited to speak at a symposium held at the Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There, she delivered her first ever lecture in French:

La méditation peut-elle changer la vie?

(Can Meditation Change Our Lives?)

In January 2018, at the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée in Paris, she gave her second lecture in French:

Le secret des centenaires

(The Secret of Centenarians)

She explored the wisdom woven into the daily lives of Japanese centenarians, presenting it as an art of living.

What she has discovered through a lifetime of exploration, she seeks to share with each individual, enriching their own life.

ART THROUGH DIALOGUE

Art Through Dialogue, within a club. 

Founded in 1917, during the First World War, to increase dialogue between leading figures from the Allied nations, the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée is one of Paris’s most distinguished private clubs. For more than a century, it has endured as a place of friendship and exchange across national borders.

As a member of the Cercle, she initiates a dialogue with people from various fields, sharing perspectives on Japanese art, culture, thought, philosophy, science and politics, among many other subjects.

Through these encounters, she seeks to foster mutual understanding across cultures and a shared aspiration for peace.

Here, art is not exhibited but practised — through dialogue, through the way one carries oneself, through the way one regards others.

Perhaps her parents’ wish that she might one day become a diplomat has, in its own way, been fulfilled — through her life as an artist.

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VI — LIVING RIMPA, CONNECTING WORLDS

Living Rimpa, Connecting Worlds

From Japanese painting to fresco, from gold leaf to architecture, and onward to the most advanced digital technologies.

To inherit a tradition is not to repeat the past. It is to bring together techniques from different times and cultures, continually opening new possibilities for beauty.

That exploration continues today, in the age of artificial intelligence.

During her student years in Kyoto, her answer to the question of human creativity was gold leaf.

Nearly half a century has passed since then.

AI-powered robots are becoming a reality, and the creative capabilities of artificial intelligence have far surpassed the limits once imagined.

Yet she looks towards that future with joy, while continuing, with unwavering conviction, to work with gold leaf.

Her intention is not to reject the evolution of AI and robotics. Rather, by embracing the possibilities of technology, she seeks to explore more deeply the meaning of creation born of human sensitivity and aesthetic awareness.

She was appointed Ambassador of the EuropIA Institute, organizer of the World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF) and the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF), by its President, Marco Landi, former President of Apple Inc. World.

She contributed to bringing WAIFF to Japan and South Korea.

In March 2026, the festival was held in Kyoto for the first time in Japan, under the theme Tradition × Innovation. The festival was also held in Seoul that same month.

However far technology advances, her conviction remains unchanged.

AI should serve human aesthetic sensibility, not replace it.

“The world today needs a spirit and an art rooted in beauty more than ever before,” she says.

From the RIMPA21 MUSEUM to the world. And onward to the 22nd century.

From Kōetsu and Sōtatsu to Kōrin, Hōitsu and Sekka — Rimpa has been reborn, roughly every hundred years, across four centuries.

In the latter half of the 19th century, its spirit crossed the seas, captivating Western artists through the flourishing movement of Japonisme.

To ensure that this four-hundred-year legacy lives on, to bring it into bloom once again in the 21st century, and to pass it on to future generations.

So that the aesthetic spirit of Rimpa may live not only within museums, but in everyday life throughout the world.

And today, she continues to lay gold leaf, one sheet at a time.