FUJI ART CAMP
August 2nd to 9th
SARUYA, Fujiyoshida
Come work on your personal artistic projects for a week in a different and serene environment and meet other artists. We’re organizing talks and meetings for attendants to connect and fuel each other’s inspiration!
SARUYA is an Artist Residency in Japan, located at the bottom of Mt. Fuji,in the city of Fujiyoshida.
SARUYA Artist Residency offers studio space and accommodation in the Mt Fuji area in Japan. The duration of the residency is between 2 weeks and 3 months .
Since 2017, SARUYA has received more than 30 artists from all over the world. As such, our goal is to foster cultural and artistic exchanges between Japanese artists and foreign artists.
We accept any art discipline that can be exercised in our creation spaces. For instance, we’ve had artists in the following fields: Painting, Mixed visual media, Dance, Performance, Video.
As a very small structure, we offer a hands off approach to the concept of art residency. Therefore artists are invited to organize their schedule and projects. However, we are here to support you and will organize small exhibitions in our studios.
Thank you very much for the many applications to the SARUYA ARTIST RESIDENCY. The open call for 2026 will be announced next summer. We look forward to receiving your applications!
SARUYA ARTIST RESIDENCY
The Creation Spaces
We provide a studio space, inside the main building where the rooms and common areas are.
We have woodworking tools as well as digital printers for the artists to use.
The Rooms
SARUYA Artist Residency offers 4 rooms on the second floor of a recently refurbished building.
Those rooms are traditional tatami rooms with futons and shôji (paper doors).
The Common Areas
The common areas are located at different floors of our main building. They include a kitchen-dining room, a bathroom, a shower room, a balcony and a rooftop with a fantastic view on Mt Fuji (the video at the top was taken from there)!
The Details
- Duration of residency: 4 weeks to 3 months
- Studio space: shared studio.
- Accommodation: 4 rooms in a shared building
- Food, Transportation, Art Supplies not included
The residency fee is based on several factors. The room you choose, the length of your stay as well as the number of people in your room.
The base fee is ¥106,000 per month in summer and ¥132,000 in winter, please contact us for details about you particular needs.
Concept
SARUYA Artist Residency provides a supportive environment for artists to reflect on their practice and pursue projects in the context of a slow rural Japanese life.
We are part of a city wide effort to revive the area and promote diversity. As such, we are inviting artists to immerse themselves in the local arts, culture and crafts and then present their work to the local community.
Artists are encouraged to communicate with us before their stay to make sure we plan for any special need.
The Residency Location
3-28-8 Shimoyoshida, Fujiyoshida
Yamanashi 403-0004
View on Google Maps
From Tokyo Haneda:
Direct bus from the airport to Mt Fuji station
From Tokyo Narita:
Narita Express to Shinjuku
Then Bus to Mt Fuji Station
The Residency Story
Our Founder
Tsuyoshi Yagi studied art in Nagoya for 4 years and at the Beaux Arts school in Dijon, France for another 4 years. After that, he headed back to Japan with a drive to create a bridge between culture and art.
After several years working as a designer in Tokyo, he refurbished an old Japanese house into a hostel. Using local materials as well as woodworking skills to create an environment where every detail is crafted with the utmost attention to design, he mixed traditional Japanese aesthetics with modern inspiration. The thriving SARUYA Hostel is located steps away from the artist residency. It provides a relaxing space to explore its varied art centric library.
How the artist residency started
The next obvious step for Tsuyoshi was to create an artist residency in Japan to share his inspiration with artists from all over the world and gain perspective from their practice.
So in 2017 he opened a dedicated studio space on the same block as the hostel. Artists could come work on their art there while staying at the hostel.
Subsequently, in order to offer more working space and dedicated accommodation for the artists, he refurbished an old building. Opened in late 2019 this new location features a great first floor open studio and traditional Japanese rooms.
With partners starting to support the residency in 2020 we hope to be able to develop more interactions with the Japanese crafts and art world.
Our Sponsors
SARUYA is proud to introduce someone who is a constant source of inspiration, Mr Fumio Nanjo.
He is the former director of 15 years of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and now its Senior Advisor. And he also runs a company that manages several museums in Japan. Mr Nanjo became a sponsor in 2020 in a personal capacity.
Loftwork Inc. is a creative agency which designs websites, contents, services, communication and spaces. They manage the digital craft cafe “FabCafe” with expansion overseas, creative lounge “MTRL (Material)” which comes face to face with raw materials. They also run the online community awrd.com, in addition to the platform “OpenCU” which accelerates creative learning.
Contact us
Notice*
Our Open call for 2025 has been closed.
We will reopen our admission around Jun 2025.
Please send us a message if you have any questions regarding our residency.
To submit an application, please visit our application page.