Gallery PuruPuru
📍 Hokkaido, Asahikawa
A tiny art space run by Hiroshi Abe — the picture-book illustrator who spent 25 years as an Asahiyama Zoo keeper before becoming one of Japan's best-loved children's authors — with a new exhibition every couple of months.
On Asahikawa’s pedestrian shopping street sits Gallery PuruPuru, a small independent art space run by Hiroshi Abe — a picture-book illustrator whose earlier career gives the gallery its whole reason for being.
Why It’s Interesting
Before he became one of Japan’s best-known children’s book authors, Abe spent 25 years as a zookeeper at Asahiyama Zoo, caring for elephants, lions, owls, and more from 1972 until 1996. That hands-on animal experience runs straight through his illustration work, which has won major awards including the Kodansha Publication Culture Award for picture books and the Shogakukan Award for children’s books. In 2011 he founded the NPO Kawauso Club in Asahikawa and opened Gallery PuruPuru as its exhibition space, showing his own work and others’ in shows that rotate roughly every two months — a genuinely personal, artist-run gallery rather than a formal museum.
Best Time to Visit
Open year-round, 11:00–17:00; closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Worth timing to whichever exhibition is currently up.
Getting There
On 7-jō-dōri along Asahikawa’s Heiwa-dōri pedestrian shopping park, about 15 minutes on foot from JR Asahikawa Station; no dedicated lot, but public parking is available nearby.
🐿️ Cinnamon was here
Field report
Jason's request had "someone who makes art in their house and has a display" written all over it, and I think I found the exact right someone. Hiroshi Abe spent 25 years as a keeper at Asahiyama Zoo — elephants, lions, owls — before he became one of Japan's most-loved picture-book authors, and now he runs this small gallery himself through the NPO he founded.
The room was barely bigger than my old tree hollow, every wall covered floor to ceiling in ink and watercolor animals that clearly came from someone who'd actually watched them up close for a quarter century. I recognized a heron mid-stretch that looked exactly like one I'd seen at the zoo two towns over. Small world, apparently, even for a squirrel who travels a lot.
People who've visited keep saying the show changes every couple of months, so it's never quite the same gallery twice. My tip: call ahead if there's a specific exhibition you're chasing, because what's on the wall today might not be there next month.
— Cinnamon 🐿️
📸 Cinnamon's camera roll
Snapshots from our very good boy on the road.
Where it is
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Heiwa-dōri Kaimono Kōen (Peace Street Sculpture Walk)
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Nearby discoveries
Asahikawa Design Center
Asahiyama Zoo Penguin Walk
Asahikawa Ramen Village
Kamuikotan Gorge
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