Uchino Tadashi received his MA in American Literature (1984) and Ph.D. in Performance Studies (2002), both from the University of Tokyo. He was a professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1992-2017) and received the title of professor emeritus at the U. of Tokyo (2019).  He is currently a professor at the Department of Japanese Studies, Faculty of Intercultural Studies, Gakushuin Women’s College. His publication includes The Melodramatic Revenge (1996), From Melodrama to Performance (2001), Crucible Bodies (2009) and The Location of J Theatre  (2016).  Uchino has served in many Japanese academic societies and is currently a contributing editor for TDR (Cambridge UP).  

Emily Wakeling is a writer and curator with experience in Japan, the UK and Australia. In Tokyo, she worked as an editor for Tokyo Art Beat and as an adjunct lecturer at Joshibi University of Art & Design and Kanagawa University. She was the Assistant Curator for the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. Her art writing has been included in numerous art journals including Eyeline Contemporary Visual Arts, Art Monthly Australasia, ArtAsiaPacific and ArtReview Asia. Emily is currently undertaking a PhD at Queensland University of Technology.

As the curator of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, she was in charge of curating the following exhibitions: Shinro Ohtake Zen-kei Retrospective 1955-2006 (2006), Sayoko Yamaguchi: The Wearist, Clothed in the Future (2015), An Art Exhibition for Children: Whose place is this? (2015), Eiko Ishioka: Blood,Sweat,and Tears-A Life of Design (2020), Christian Marclay Translating (2021), A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art; Takahashi Ryutaro Collection(2024) and Kenjiro Okazaki 而今而後 Time Unfolding Here(2025). She also curated Sapporo International Art Festival 2017 and others. Her writings on modern and contemporary Japanese art have appeared in a number of journals in Japan.

Music critic, writes about music and the culture surrounding it for publications including iD-Japan, Eureka, OTOTOY, Mikiki, ele-king, The Sign Magazine, and Jazz The New Chapter. His younger brother is New Japan Pro-Wrestling wrestler Tetsuhiro Yagi.

Curator/ CEO NYAW inc./ Co-president of Tokyo Art Acceleration. After working as a curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa and Contemporary Art Centre, Art Tower Mito, he became the director of ANB Tokyo and established NYAW Inc. Major exhibitions include ‘Hello World-for the Post-Human Age’ and ‘Resistance of Fog|Fujiko Nakaya’ (Art Tower Mito) and ‘The world began without the human race and it will end without it.’ (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts). In addition to planning and consulting on culture/art-related projects such as the art festival ‘Meet Your Art Festival “NEW SOIL”‘ organised by avex, Music Loves Art in Summer Sonic and the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Cultural Economy Strategy Promotion Project, he also supervises art programmes and features in magazines and on TV. He is also a writer, lecturer, jury member, etc. He was a 2015 overseas trainee for curators from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and a part-time lecturer at Waseda University and Tokyo Polytechnic University. Passed away in 2025. Photo: Ittetsu Matsuoka

Hiroki Yamamoto, born in Chiba in 1986, is a cultural studies scholar and Associate Professor at Jissen Women’s University in Japan. Yamamoto graduated in Social Science at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, in 2010, and completed his MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts (UAL), London, in 2013. In 2018, he received a PhD from the University of the Arts London. After working at the Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, South Korea, as a research fellow, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University as a postdoctoral fellow, and Tokyo University of the Arts as an Assistant Professor, he was a Lecturer at Kanazawa College of Art until 2023. His single-authored publications are The History of Contemporary Art: Euro-America, Japan, and Transnational (Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2019) and Art of the Post-Anthropocene (Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, 2022). He co-edited De-Imperializing Japanese Art History: Art and Legacies of Empire in Modern and Contemporary Japan (Getsuyo-Sha, 2023).