Neo Ippei is an art space in Hachinohe, Aomori. It is an art gallery initially renovated from a Japanese-style restaurant called “Shokujidokoro Ippei.”

The owner, Takasago Mikiko, is an architect and artist who graduated from the Department of Architecture at Tokyo University of the Arts, and returned home in 2021 after building a career in the USA. Since high school, she was the kind of girl who wrote in her diary about her dream to go abroad once and come back to Hachinohe to enliven the city. Currently, she is also involved in the development of ‘Your Trip’, an art therapy experience using VR tomb.

The place is a gallery on the ground floor, an artist-in-residence base on the second floor and an office on the third floor. Exhibitions and workshops are held by artists from Japan and abroad who have stayed here, and her illustrations are always on display and for sale in the gallery space. Traditional details of old houses, such as decorative shoji screens and ranma, iron furniture made in her family’s ironworks, the colourful architecture of San Francisco, Victorian house watercolours and diary-like zines, A mixture of different times, countries and people, it is truly a place where you can feel the intersection of art, technology and architecture.

At the opening party held in June 2024, about 100 guests gathered from local museums, newspapers, politicians, executives, and other local dignitaries, as well as artists from overseas, who supported the concept of “bringing comprehensive art to the local area,” and photographer Anthony Hou’s first exhibition.

This is truly a place that contributes to the revitalization of local urban communities through art.