Kenji Urai was recognized for his performance in the stage production Henry IV, based on Shakespeare's history plays. The work depicts political conflict around the crown, father-son tension, and Prince Hal's growth; the award honored the stage performance and actor's achievement, not a book edition.

A wayward prince is tested by civil conflict and his father's shadow as he grows toward kingship.

Koji Fukada's feature film follows a small family metalworking shop whose daily life begins to unravel after an old acquaintance of the husband appears. With restrained direction, it depicts guilt and estrangement hidden inside an intimate household.

Until that man appeared, the family believed it could remain a family.

A cycle of Mahler symphonies conducted by Kazuki Yamada with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. The project built up these large-scale, spiritually charged works through the concentration of a young conductor and his sustained relationship with the orchestra.

A series in which conductor and orchestra sustained a long engagement with Mahler's vast sound world.

A New National Theatre Ballet production of Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet in the 2016/2017 season. As Juliet, Yui Yonezawa conveyed the heroine's movement through love, conflict, and death with detailed physical expression.

On a wordless stage, Juliet's emotions emerge through the body.

A coming-of-age novel about Jini, a Korean Japanese girl searching for a place between Japan and Korean school, past and present, language and body. Set against the social tension of 1998, it portrays a voice trying to survive discrimination and anger.

Between two languages and worlds, Jini rebuilds the outline of who she is.

The Estonian National Museum, designed with Tsuyoshi Tane as part of DGT., is a cultural facility that incorporates the memory of a former Soviet military runway into its architecture. Rather than erasing the site's history, its long roof and exhibition spaces connect national memory with the future.

The memory of a runway is transformed into architecture that holds a nation's story.

An NHK drama that interweaves Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's life with the early history of television. Tsuyoshi Inoue reconstructs real entertainment history with a light narrative touch and musical direction, opening the memory of television to contemporary viewers.

The excitement of television's early days returns as a drama of music and memory.

A solo stage series by the manzai duo Knights. Nobuyuki Hanawa's rapid blend of current affairs, entertainment references, and wordplay, matched with Nobuyuki Tsuchiya's precise responses, renews a classic manzai form for the present.

Misstatements and topical references become stage comedy through precise comic response.

A solo stage series by the manzai duo Knights. Nobuyuki Hanawa's jokes built on verbal slippage combine with Nobuyuki Tsuchiya's skill as a listener, producing dense rhythms and information-rich comedy.

The duo's timing turns verbal slippage into stage velocity.

An interactive installation by teamLab in which digital koi respond to visitors walking through water. The koi trace lines across the surface and turn into flowers when they encounter people, making the viewer's actions part of the work.

The movement of people through water generates the paths of koi and the transformation of flowers.

A substantial study that rereads the films of Kenji Mizoguchi across film history, aesthetics, politics, gender studies, and media theory. Through long takes, vertical composition, censorship records, and shooting scripts, it analyzes the modernity and politics opened by Mizoguchi's cinema.

By closely reading Mizoguchi's shots and archival materials, the book reconsiders how cinema reflects history and politics.

Yuko Mohri's solo exhibition Pleated Image used scanners, light, and mechanisms of movement to show images being folded, disturbed, and generated. Mechanical devices and chance intersect, prompting viewers to reconsider how visible images come into being.

Folded images acquire new appearances through mechanical motion and chance.