This past June, Art Assembly, a company known for running major art fairs across Asia-Pacific, announced ambitious plans to launch a whole new international fair in Japan. Known as Tokyo Gendai, it is set to kick off in July 2023 with 80 to 100 international art galleries.

Tokyo Gendai is hardly the only new art fair to launch in the region since the start of the pandemic. With the hope of reaching some of the world’s most rapidly expanding economies, Frieze Seoul held its inaugural edition in September. ART SG, another fair by Art Assembly, has planned its long-awaited first edition in Singapore for January 2023.

But Tokyo Gendai is being closely watched, given Japan’s global status as an arbiter of taste, its storied history as an international art market hub, the government’s recent tax deregulations, and, most importantly, the rise of a whole new generation of Japanese art collectors.

Speaking to ARTnews, Magnus Renfrew, cofounder of Art Assembly and the Taipei Dangdai art fair, said that the momentum from young collectors is being felt across Asia.

“This has accelerated over the past few years,” Renfrew said. “Japan is no exception to this. A younger generation of new collectors is adding to the existing highly sophisticated collector base in the country.”

Kyoko Hattori, a Japan-based regional director at Phillips, agreed, observing that…