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Akari 2A UKAI
Akari 2A UKAI
Akari 2A UKAI
Akari 2A UKAI
Akari 2A UKAI
Akari 2A UKAI
Akari 2A UKAI
Akari 2A UKAI

Akari 2A UKAI

Designed c. 1954
The Akari 2A UKAI is one of the first Akari light sculptures designed by Isamu Noguchi. A variation of the 2A, it features a screenprinted abstraction based on traditional cormorant fishing (ukai), mulberry bark washi paper, tight, evenly-spaced bamboo ribbing, and wooden collars (wa) on each side of its cylindrical form. The top of its three-legged metal frame is accented with wrapped bamboo.
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Design by Ash Staging, ashstaging.com. Photo: Joe Tankersley, @jotankersley
From the Archives
In 1952, Isamu Noguchi continued working on the Akari light sculpture series he had begun a year earlier in Gifu. He created around eighteen prototypes—some with screenprinted designs, like the 2—and exhibited them at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura.1 A promotional sheet from the period shows most of the new Akari and, helpfully, assembly instructions.2

An early version of the 2A, seemingly with slightly different proportions to the current model, is seen in a hazy, undated photograph with the now-discontinued 11A.3

The 2 prototype, with its printed purple circle and orange diamond, appears again at the Chuo Koron Gallery exhibition of 1954,4,5 labeled as 2A in the show’s brochure, alongside a 2A printed with an abstraction of cormorant fishing (later called the 2A UKAI), and a now-discontinued design for the model, featuring a pattern of line drawings.

Noguchi cited the traditional nighttime cormorant fishing in Gifu as a crux of Akari’s origin story: “It is like a chariot race of birds in which we take part, caught in the excitement, drifting along beside the busy fishing in our lantern-bedecked boat,” he wrote in 1954.6,7 The 2A UKAI, along with the 3A UKAI, pays homage to the tradition.
Installation view, “Isamu Noguchi Exhibition,” Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, September 23 – October 19, 1952. Photo: Isamu Noguchi. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 09229.6. ©INFGM / ARS
Fig. 1
Akari Lamps by Isamu Noguchi promotional sheet, c. 1952. The Noguchi Museum Archives, LBD_50S_025_005. ©INFGM / ARS
Fig. 2
Akari 2A and 11A. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 03583. ©INFGM / ARS
Fig. 3
Installation view, “Isamu Noguchi Exhibition,” Chuo Koron Gallery, Tokyo, August 2–7, 1954. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 07137. ©INFGM / ARS
Fig. 4
Installation view, “Isamu Noguchi Exhibition,” Chuo Koron Gallery, Tokyo, August 2–7, 1954. Photo: Isamu Noguchi. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 09316.4. ©INFGM / ARS
Fig. 5
Isamu Noguchi, “Japanese Akari Lamps,” Craft Horizons, October 1954, 17–18. The Noguchi Museum Archives, BM_JOU_0578_1954. ©INFGM / ARS
Fig. 6
Isamu Noguchi, “Japanese Akari Lamps,” Craft Horizons, October 1954, 17–18. The Noguchi Museum Archives, BM_JOU_0578_1954. ©INFGM / ARS
Fig. 7
About Akari Light Sculptures

Learn more about the history of Akari, one of Isamu Noguchi’s most successful efforts “to bring sculpture into a more direct involvement with the common experience of living.”

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