Projection Mapping on Cultural Properties and the Care It Requires: Examples at Castles, Temples, Shrines and Government Buildings, and National and Tokyo Guidelines

Events projecting images onto castles, temples, shrines and historic government buildings continue around Japan. This autumn and winter, too, projections and light-ups are planned at castles, temples and shrines in various places. While light staging adorns buildings, considerations specific to cultural properties are indispensable, such as where to place equipment, power supply, light intensity and visitor safety. Drawing on examples in Japan, the Act on Protection of Cultural Properties and guidelines from the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Ministry of the Environment and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, this article sets out the key points.

Castles, temples, shrines and government buildings: Main examples of recent years

Among castles, the “National Treasure Matsumoto Castle Keep Projection Mapping” in Nagano Prefecture continues as a winter event. The 2025–2026 edition projected onto the keep and stone walls in three periods from December 13, 2025, to February 15, 2026. Its motifs included nishiki-e prints and folding-screen paintings in the collection of the Matsumoto City Museum and crafts such as Matsumoto temari, and viewing was free.

At Toyama Castle (Toyama Municipal Folk Museum, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property) in Toyama City, what the organizers described as the site’s first projection mapping was held in May 2025, depicting a phoenix, Toyama’s traditional crafts and tulips as a message of encouragement for recovery and reconstruction from the Noto Peninsula Earthquake. At Tsuruga-jo Castle, a projection was held in 2025, the 60th anniversary of the keep’s reconstruction, for the first time in six years, and it will be held again in 2026 from Friday, November 20 to Sunday, November 22.

Among temples and shrines, in November 2024, images were projected onto the National Treasure Miedo and Nyoraido halls of Takada Honzan Senju-ji in Tsu, Mie Prefecture. Laser mapping was also combined on the Miedo, about 42 m wide and 25 m high, and about 13,000 people visited over three days (organizers’ figure). In January 2025, Daiju-ji in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, projected onto its Sanmon gate, a prefecture-designated Tangible Cultural Property, and also used for the first time high-resolution digital data of 22 Important Cultural Property painted cedar doors, closed to the public for more than 40 years, recreating their world through projection.

Among government buildings, “AICHI NAGOYA ART & LIGHTS” was held until Saturday, October 24, at the Aichi Prefectural Government Main Office Building and the Nagoya City Hall Main Building, both Imperial Crown-style buildings designated as national Important Cultural Properties. Making use of the Imperial Crown-style design, it incorporated line animation that highlighted the buildings’ outlines, alternating about five minutes of projection with about five minutes of light-up.

Production companies’ methods also vary. At the Fukuoka Castle ruins, teamLab turns stone walls and stone steps into works of light as part of “Digitized Nature,” a project that uses digital technology to turn nature and places into art spaces without physically changing them (Friday, October 30 – Monday, January 11, 2027 [national holiday]). At Nijo Castle, NAKED plans staging that uses words based on historical sources, such as the waka poems and letters of Tokugawa Masako, as narration. Events around the country are introduced in our roundup of projection mapping and light events across Japan.

The legal premise: “Preservation” and “public access and utilization”

The basis for utilizing cultural properties lies in the Act on Protection of Cultural Properties. Article 4(2) asks owners and other relevant parties to preserve cultural properties carefully for the public good while striving to make them as accessible to the public as possible and to utilize them culturally.

On the other hand, Article 43(1) provides that altering the existing state of an Important Cultural Property, or carrying out acts that affect its preservation, requires permission from the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs. Alterations made as maintenance measures or emergency measures in the event of disaster, and acts whose effect is minor, are excluded. When planning light staging, both this preservation provision and the obligation to strive for public access and utilization are premises.

National subsidy programs also encourage utilization. Senju-ji’s 2024 event and Daiju-ji’s 2025 event both received the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ fiscal 2024 “Subsidy for Cultural Resource Utilization Projects (Project to Promote the Utilization of Attractive Cultural Properties Nationwide).” The background to these programs is covered in detail in our article on why illuminations and projection mapping at cultural properties are proliferating.

Ways to avoid fixing equipment to buildings

When projecting indoors, where to place the equipment is the first challenge. Writing in the academic journal “Shikisaigaku” (Journal of the Color Science Association of Japan, 2024), Maya Oguri of Aichi Institute of Technology notes that traditional wooden buildings have low ceilings, and given that they are cultural properties, attaching projectors to ceilings or fixing them to walls is difficult.

In an example Oguri introduces, five projectors were used at the Oguri Family Residence in Handa, Aichi Prefecture, each projecting onto shoji screens from inside the building. For a tea ceremony presentation, new tatami mats with holes were made and swapped in, while the original mats were left untouched and stored. At the Nezu Museum, where there was no place to install projectors, special andon lanterns with built-in compact projectors were made to project images onto the tatami.

Oguri notes that among cultural property buildings, Registered Tangible Cultural Properties number 13,761 (as of January 2024), far more than the 231 National Treasures and 2,565 Important Cultural Properties. Oguri concludes that by making use of the characteristics of shoji screens and Japanese-style rooms, projection mapping can be used even at small registered cultural properties.

Outdoors, there is also the approach of making use of the nature of light itself. teamLab positions its Fukuoka Castle ruins exhibition as an attempt to turn a place into an art space without physically changing it. Methods like Daiju-ji’s, using high-resolution digital data of unseen wall and door paintings to show the world of the works in video, can also be a means of conveying the content of cultural properties that are normally not on view. Equipment placement and projection calculations are explained in our explainer on how projection mapping works.

Light intensity and flashing: Consideration for works, surroundings and living things

For the brightness at which National Treasure and Important Cultural Property artworks are displayed, the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ “Guidelines for the Handling of the Public Display of National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties” set upper limits. Established in 1996 and most recently revised in June 2023, the guidelines call for keeping illuminance at, in principle, 150 lux or less, setting 100 lux or less for paintings and calligraphy, 80 lux or less for textiles and 50 lux or less for prints. Annual display is in principle limited to a total of 60 days, or 30 days for works at high risk of fading or material deterioration.

Outdoor light is also judged by its effect on the surrounding environment. The Ministry of the Environment’s Light Pollution Guidelines (revised edition, March 2021) include lighting used temporarily for light-ups and events as “landscape lighting.” They state that even landscape lighting must keep light pollution to a minimum and call for avoiding unnecessary exposure of light sources, flashing, movement and coloring through filters.

The guidelines also call for controlling light distribution to minimize light spilling beyond the target and for avoiding searchlights aimed at the night sky. They state that the need to illuminate trees and water surfaces should be considered carefully, and that if they are illuminated, the ecosystem should be surveyed to confirm that the impact is extremely small. They also say thorough consultation with local residents and stakeholders is important. There is no section dealing only with projection mapping, and the “Projection Mapping Implementation Manual” and other documents are listed as related materials.

Some local governments have set standards that go into the content of the images. Since July 1, 2020, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has set display standards for projection mapping in the rules of its Outdoor Advertising Ordinance. The metropolitan guidelines limit flashing of images and light to, in principle, three times per second and call for particular care with flashing vivid red. Cases in which the area flashing simultaneously exceeds one-quarter of the screen and the change in luminance is 10% or more are treated as exceeding the standard.

For landscape considerations, the metropolitan guidelines set standards for zones such as views of the National Diet Building, the State Guest House, the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery and the Marunouchi Building of Tokyo Station, and views from cultural property gardens, and call for prior consultation with facility managers and others at cultural property gardens and similar sites. Public-interest events can display without a permit if they meet four conditions: a display period of three months or less, corporate advertising and the like accounting for roughly one-third or less, public-interest use of advertising proceeds, and submission of a notification.

Preparing for fire and crowd flow

Fire prevention is also essential. Following the fires at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and Shuri Castle, the Agency for Cultural Affairs carried out an urgent survey and compiled fire prevention guidelines based on the results. The “Fire Prevention Guidelines for National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties (Buildings)” were drawn up as a reference version on September 2, 2019, and revised on December 23 of the same year.

The revised checklist calls for identifying new fire risks arising from unusual uses and taking measures to prevent fires and enable initial firefighting. As an example of such risks, it cites that “the risk of fire increases from using electrical equipment or fire-using equipment not normally used,” and encourages owners and users to plan countermeasures together. It also lists checking wiring, noting that continuing to use old electrical wiring risks fires from electrical leakage.

For use by large numbers of unspecified people, the guidelines call for installing emergency broadcast equipment and conducting regular drills to evacuate users quickly. At nighttime events, managing crowd flow by the organizer also becomes important. Senso-ji’s “ASAKUSA CULTURE & LIGHTS 2026” asks visitors to move one way through the venue under staff guidance and may restrict entry when crowded. The event’s content is introduced in our article on the Senso-ji projection mapping.

Rules for visitors also play a role in protecting people and buildings. Tsuruga-jo Castle in 2026 asks that, when using tripods, cameras be kept no higher than the photographer’s head, and that visitors refrain from shooting while using stepladders or anything else that keeps their feet off the ground. At the Senso-ji event, tripods, selfie sticks and other auxiliary equipment cannot be used.

Editor’s perspective

Laying out the examples and guidelines shows that light staging at cultural properties demands design of “where to place equipment, how to light and how to operate” as much as of “what to project”: equipment not fixed to buildings, light that limits flashing and spill, identification of the risks of electrical equipment not normally used, and management of crowd flow.

The choice of subject matter also carries meaning specific to cultural properties. Just as Matsumoto Castle turned the local museum’s nishiki-e into video, Senju-ji the designs of the temple’s cultural properties and Daiju-ji the data of unseen wall and door paintings, staging that conveys the value of buildings and their collections can become a circuit linking preservation and utilization. On the other hand, the Ministry of the Environment’s guidelines call for landscape lighting to avoid flashing, movement and coloring. How far to accept moving, colorful images will likely be decided through repeated consultation with local residents and stakeholders.

Frequently asked questions

Is permission needed to project images onto cultural properties?

The Act on Protection of Cultural Properties requires permission from the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs to alter the existing state of an Important Cultural Property or carry out acts that affect its preservation (Article 43). The Tokyo Metropolitan Government sets display standards for projection mapping under its Outdoor Advertising Ordinance and allows public-interest events to display without a permit if they meet standards including notification. The metropolitan guidelines also call for prior consultation with traffic administrators and with managers of facilities such as cultural property gardens.

What are the benchmarks when projecting inside buildings that house artworks?

The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ display guidelines set illuminance for National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties at, in principle, 150 lux or less, with 100 lux or less for paintings and 50 lux or less for prints, among other limits. On equipment placement, Maya Oguri’s paper introduces examples of swapping in newly made tatami while leaving the original mats untouched, and of building projectors into andon lanterns.

What are the main events at cultural properties this autumn and winter?

At the Fukuoka Castle ruins, “teamLab: Digitized Fukuoka Castle Ruins 2026-2027” runs until Monday, January 11, 2027 (national holiday) (organizer’s announcement).

Articles organized by each stage of planning are gathered in our guide for those planning projection mapping and light events.

The schedules of events at castles around the country in 2026–2027 are set out in our roundup of castle projection mapping and night events.

*Information as of October 21, 2026. Please check the official websites for the latest information.

*Top image: “Takada Honzan Senju-ji National Treasure Miedo and National Treasure Nyoraido Digital Art Night 2024” (from HITOHATA, INC.’s press release)

*This article was compiled by the TOKYO ART SPHERE editorial team based on official announcements by each organizer and facility and public materials from government agencies and researchers (as of October 21, 2026).

Text: TOKYO ART SPHERE Editorial Team

A note from the publisher

*Disclosure: Among the examples introduced in this article, HITOHATA, INC., an affiliate of HITOHATA ASSOCIATION, the general incorporated association that operates TOKYO ART SPHERE, is involved in the events at Matsumoto Castle, Takada Honzan Senju-ji (top image), Daiju-ji, the Aichi Prefectural Government building and Nagoya City Hall (AICHI NAGOYA ART & LIGHTS), Senso-ji and Tsuruga-jo Castle (About us).

Among this autumn and winter’s events at cultural properties, Senso-ji’s “ASAKUSA CULTURE & LIGHTS 2026” (Friday, October 30 – Tuesday, November 3 [national holiday], 18:00–21:30) and “Tsuruga-jo Castle Projection Mapping 2026” (Friday, November 20 – Sunday, November 22, 17:30–21:00) are both planned, produced and presented by HITOHATA, INC., with free viewing and no advance registration required (organizers’ announcements).

HITOHATA, INC., an affiliate of HITOHATA ASSOCIATION, the general incorporated association that operates TOKYO ART SPHERE, plans, directs, produces and operates projection mapping at National Treasures, Important Cultural Properties, World Heritage Sites and urban landmarks, as well as immersive exhibitions. The company offers consultations for those at the stage of applying the processes, costs and procedures outlined in this article to a specific venue and budget. Inquiries, including those at the stage before a budget is set, are accepted through HITOHATA, INC.’s contact form (which has an option for local government and public projects). The company’s past work is introduced on HITOHATA, INC.’s project portfolio page.