Through its previous eight festivals, the Ikebukuro-based Festival/Tokyo has established itself as a performing arts event truly representative of Japan and Asia. For its ninth iteration, the 2016 festival programs a unique range of events and performances, including the work of famous overseas artists and participatory events.

Development of the previous site of Toshima City Office has now started. By spring 2020, Ikebukuro will transform into a vibrant, international cultural hub with eight theatres. In anticipation of the global attention that Tokyo will attract for the 2020 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, Toshima continues to work towards its vision of being an international artistic and cultural part of the city, creating and disseminating new culture around the world. Please look forward to it.

Lastly, I would like to offer my thanks to all the individuals and organizations, including local businesses and shops, whose tireless efforts have helped realize the festival.

Festival/Tokyo began in 2009 as an international performing arts event based in the Ikebukuro area, and has now staged over 211 productions and reached audiences of more than 410,000.

F/T16 is the ninth festival and presents a wide range of performing arts, including visits by leading artists from Europe, as well as diverse others from Japan and elsewhere around the world.

As we head towards the 2020 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, this international festival will help to create new global artistic values, as well as strengthen networks with other festivals, theatres, and cultural organizations around Japan and overseas, aspiring to contribute to cultural interchange that transcends regional and national boundaries.

I would like to take this opportunity to offer my thanks to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Japan Foundation Asia Center, our corporate sponsors, regional organizations, and the many others who have given us their generous support and cooperation.

Festival/Tokyo is organized by Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture in partnership with arts bodies and a non-profit organization, in order to create a global, cultural city.

The festival launched in February 2009, since when it has continued to present a program of leading arts from Japan and around the world. This year marks the ninth festival, now firmly established as an international performing arts event in Tokyo that creates new arts and culture.

In addition, F/T16 forms part of Tokyo Metropolitan Festival 2016, which features a diverse program of performing arts events in the Ikebukuro area of Toshima City.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Festival is a comprehensive arts festival for the city in accordance with Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Tokyo Cultural Vision, widely conveying the appeals of Tokyo and gradually developing a large-scale festival that aspires to be participatory and offer interactions that cultivate new values.

The festival is an opportunity to praise the achievements of F/T and evolve them further.

A festival always takes a long time to prepare, but then start all of a sudden and, just as suddenly, end. Perhaps it is somewhat like the life cycle of a cicada: its true form is surely during the long preparation period before it flies away. In the same way, Olympic and Paralympic athletes also spend a long time training, only for their competition to start and end quickly. I want athletes to have more opportunities to interact with art. They will surely find many things in common with artists and be able to make mutual discoveries. Likewise, we will interact with sport.

Culture and the arts are necessary for the Olympic and Paralympic games. They are born naturally out of human existence; the body cannot be separated from sensibility and the mind. This is what was often called the union of scholarship and martial arts.

From this year, Festival/Tokyo is organized within the framework of Tokyo Metropolitan Festival. This platform is a brand new one and still finding its way, though we should recall that great changes are not always visible at first. After all, F/T also cannot see far ahead. But it’s perhaps the essence of the role of festival director to keep a fresh face, and remember that precisely because we bring together the invisible that it is possible to make great leaps forward.

This year, we are very honored to welcome Shigeo Fukuchi as the Chair of the Festival/Tokyo Executive Committee. All the members of the Executive Committee have watched over us until now, but it feels like we have reached the moment of truth. It’s fun to make a map. Let’s make a map with all the visitors to the festival.