Japan's art world is occasionally compared to the Galapagos Islands — and not just because it is inhabited by some curious creatures; sorry, I mean artists.
No, the theory is that Charles Darwin's famous comment on the Galapagos' isolation could equally be applied to the Japanese art scene: "It seems to be a little world within itself."
Self-sufficiency has meant that Japan's artists, dealers and exhibition curators have been able to make do with the domestic audience and ignore the rest of the world. For evidence, look no further than the fact that some prominent museums still have only Japanese-language Web sites.