Keiji Uematsu

Honestly, I had never heard of Keiji Uematsu before looking him up, and that feels like a gap worth fixing. Born in Kobe in 1947 — that port city where Japan and everywhere else have always blurred together — he went on to become a sculptor, illustrator, photographer, and performance artist all at once, which tells you something about a person: the material world alone wasn't enough to hold whatever he needed to say. There's something quietly radical about a sculptor who keeps reaching past the object itself into gesture, image, and idea. Kobe's that kind of city too, a place that never felt purely Japanese, and I like imagining that ambiguity seeping into his work. He's not a household name, but artists who work at the edge of categories rarely are — and that might be exactly the point.

Keiji Uematsu is a Japanese artist born on January 1, 1947, in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture. He studied at Kobe University and works across multiple disciplines including sculpture, illustration, photography, performance art, and conceptual art. Based in the port city of Kobe, he has pursued a multifaceted artistic practice that extends from physical sculptural works to conceptual and performative expression.

Name (English)

Keiji Uematsu

Name (Japanese)

植松奎二

Reading

うえまつ けいじ

Born

January 1, 1947 (age 79)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Boar (i)

Origin

Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Sculptor / Illustrator / Photographer / Performance Artist / Conceptual Artist

University

Kobe University

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A4%8D%E6%9D%BE%E5%A5%8E%E4%BA%8C

Tags

• From Hyogo Prefecture
• Sculptor
• Illustrator
• Photographer

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.