Tribute: Curator and Writer Aric Chen Remembers the Late Arata Isozaki

The first time I met Arata Isozaki was in 2013. I came to his home in the posh Tokyo neighborhood of Azabu, where he appeared wearing a dark yukata, with his silver hair characteristically slicked back in a short, neat ponytail. The apartment was light and muted, its living room furnished with his well-known Marilyn chairs, a tatami platform, an Eames lounger, and a large Oba-Q lamp designed by his good friend Shiro Kuramata, who had passed away in 1991.

The home was located about midway between the South Korean and Chinese embassies—a detail worth noting when I recall how he and his longtime partner, the gallerist Misa Shin, would sometimes complain, with a combination of humor and resignation, about the racket they had to endure each weekend as right-wing Japanese nationalists shuttled from the embassy of one Asian neighbor to the other, to protest whatever the latest offense was.