A play written for Bungakuza that reimagines Natsume Soseki's Gubijinso in 1973 Japan. Through young people making a rock magazine, it portrays the process of growing up between ideals and reality.

It revives Soseki's world with the heat of rock at a turning point in the Showa era.

Her work on the film Nobutora as special makeup supervisor was recognized. The achievement lies in making period-character transformations work as three-dimensional makeup that can stand up to digital cinematography.

The art of transformation gives a period film greater conviction.

Drive My Car is a film that layers novelistic and theatrical elements while tracing loss and renewal in the form of a quiet road movie. Its direction was praised for building character relationships through pauses and silences as much as through dialogue.

The quiet time spent driving brings loss and renewal into view.

In New National Theatre's Don Carlo, the overwhelming singing of Filippo II was singled out in the award rationale. Within Verdi's weighty late-period historical drama, the bass presence supports the tension of the entire work.

The weight of the bass supports a drama of power, love, and rivalry.

The achievement was recognized for opening new ground in the long-performed Bolero. Mizuka Ueno sustains the tension and concentration that build through repetition directly on stage.

She brings the rising wave of repetition to life through bodily concentration.

A complete script collection of the TBS Friday drama. When a past-his-prime wrestler returns home after his father falls critically ill, the 10-episode story follows him as he is pulled between family, caregiving, and pro wrestling.

The more he returns home, the more his family's intensity is laid bare.

The work was recognized for special-makeup achievements on the films Nobutora and Masquerade Night. Through character design and physical transformation, it strengthened the on-screen presence and narrative force of both films.

Special makeup can support both the shape of a character and the weight of the story.

After escaping an abusive husband and settling in a provincial city, Izumi works in the home of an elderly painter and slowly reconsiders love and renewal after loss. It portrays isolation under pressure and the possibility of starting again.

A story of love and renewal after everything has been lost.

Naoya Hatakeyama's solo exhibition Natural Stories was recognized for looking broadly at the relationship between nature and humans through limestone landscapes, former mining sites, the film BLAST, and views of Rikuzentakata.

It reconsiders the relationship between nature and humans through expansive landscapes.

The NHK drama Slow Bushi ni Shite Kure: Kyoto Satsueijo Rhapsody playfully depicts the meeting of analog jidai-geki production and digital filmmaking technology at the Kyoto Uzumasa studio. It preserves the heat and texture of an old-fashioned film set and the people who work there.

Digital imaging blows into an old-fashioned studio set.

A rakugo performance by Shunputei Ichicho, Yodogoro is a stage-play story centered on the kabuki world. At its core is a human drama in which an obscure actor regains his footing on stage.

It lets listeners hear the weight of kabuki and the measure of a person from just outside the stage.

The work was recognized for creating the atmosphere of the room through paper-cutting in a night performance at Suzumoto Engeijo. In the highly improvisational world of yose, the sharpness of the interaction with the audience stood out.

The night in yose is sustained by the quickness of paper cutting.

An art festival set in Kobe's Nagata Ward that turns local shops and public spaces into venues and reconsiders everyday streets through art. Its walkable structure lets visitors encounter a wide range of programs while moving through Shin-Nagata.

It turns Shin-Nagata itself into a venue and gently shifts everyday life.

Tokiō Iguchi offers a full-scale critical study of Zenmei Hasuda, the Japanese literature scholar who influenced Yukio Mishima, examining him through both his wartime experience and his literary thought. The book also maps his place in modern Japanese literature through his ties to the Japanese Romanticists and Yasutaro Yasuda.

It redraws the full figure of Zenmei Hasuda at the intersection of war and literature.

Yasuhiro Sato's biography of Ito Jakuchu reinterprets the artist's life and work through his era, family background, Zen, gender, copying and sketching, and the making of Doshoku sai-e.

It uses abundant illustrations to read Jakuchu's art and life from a fresh, up-to-date perspective.

Ryoji Ikeda's solo exhibition is framed as a show that integrates visual, auditory, and spatial perception through sound, light, data, and mathematical structures.

A solo show that expands the scale of perception through sound, light, and data.