Graffiti News
Osaka’s Konohana connects mural artists across borders
Konohana brings international mural work into a neighborhood
Osaka’s Konohana neighborhood has become a meeting point for mural artists from around the world, with 37 works by artists from 22 countries. According to The Japan Times, the initiative behind that collection, Mural Town Konohana, began in September 2023. For someone following street art, the attraction is the relationship between individual paintings and the neighborhood that provides their setting: a collection encountered through ordinary urban space.
Wall Share, the Osaka company behind the project, was founded in 2020. Its work extends to Okinawa and overseas, including Malaysia and Australia, and the newspaper reports that it has produced more than 220 murals overall. That company total is distinct from the 37 murals in Konohana. The neighborhood initiative also participates in local arts programming, including Osaka Art & Design.
Permission and local relationships shape the finished walls
Wall Share’s work includes arranging the conditions that allow artists to paint, alongside producing the artwork itself. The Japan Times describes a Japanese context in which street art has long been associated with vandalism, while sanctioned murals have appeared in places such as parking garages, warehouses, sports stadiums and hotels. Those settings make the relationship between artist, property and public audience part of the story.
Founder and chief executive Takanobu Kawazoe works with industries, local authorities and artists from Japan and abroad. The company handles public-space regulations, administrative procedures and permits while considering community wishes and artistic intentions. Kawazoe describes an approach shaped by the location, audience and purpose of each commission. For viewers, that offers a useful way to look: consider how a painting relates to the place around it, as well as its imagery.
Artists carry experience between Japan and other countries
New mural opportunities in Japan give artists who developed their careers overseas another setting for their work. Hiroyasu Tsuri, who works as Twoone, began painting graffiti while attending high school in Yokohama in the late 1990s. He told The Japan Times that his practice developed after moving to Melbourne, Australia, in 2003, where he learned from active graffiti writers and street artists.
Exchange also brings overseas artists into Osaka. Yubia, from Bilbao, Spain, painted a small octopus mural for Mural Town Konohana in 2023. A second Wall Share project in 2024 came with a defined theme and brief, although the artist said there was still room for creative freedom. Spanish artist Lula Goce, who participated in the Enoen Festival in September 2025, described conversations with local people as meaningful to her development and artistic practice.
Wall Share’s CoWalls program extends exchange to producers and artists in different regions. In March 2026, murals by Twoone, Kac and Mameko Maeda were unveiled in Klang, Malaysia. Malaysian artists Dhiyaul M Ashraf, Suhaimi Ali and Afiq Afify Anuar had previously worked together on a Konohana mural. These connections show how a local collection can sit within a wider movement of people and ideas, with work taking place on both sides of an exchange.
June tours require registration before the end of May
Guided tours of Mural Town Konohana are scheduled for June 3 and 13, 2026, with online registration required by May 28. According to The Japan Times, the tours are free and led by Kawazoe, with a discussion involving poet Yoshinori Henguchi. They form part of Osaka Art & Design, whose website carries further information.
The source does not provide a complete wall-by-wall route or individual mural addresses. Visitors planning around the tours should use the event information for arrangements. Looking at murals within a neighborhood also means paying attention to the surrounding everyday space. The work is experienced in relation to buildings and people, giving a visit a different rhythm from viewing pictures in a gallery.
Kawazoe hopes to make casual encounters with art available across generations. Tsuri, meanwhile, sees public art as an opening for conversation, education and creative thought. Those are the artists’ ambitions, rather than measured outcomes, but they help explain why access and local relationships matter alongside the finished paintings.
Explore street art around you on the Wallscape map.
Source: The Japan Times