If the bulk of London's Japan 2001 Festival revisits traditions past and present, "JAM: London Tokyo" at the Barbican Gallery was designed to predict the future.

The first JAM exhibition in 1996 was a snapshot of Cool Britannia in the making. Many of the names that would become synonymous with London's identity as an art and design capital were featured. The cool, almost clinical portraits by Rankin (creative director of the youth-culture magazine Dazed and Confused Magazine) were juxtaposed with collections of club-night fliers. The cerebral clothing designs of Hussein Chalayan rubbed shoulders with sardonic, street-fashion labels.

By introducing youth culture -- at its freshest and most mercurial -- into a gallery space, organizers upended notions about what was worthy of artistic consideration and foreshadowed the increasingly blurry boundaries between fine art and commodity.

The curators of "JAM: London Tokyo" hope it will have a similar impact. If the massive crowd and hourlong wait at the opening in May were any indication, they have succeeded.

At first the combination of London and Tokyo seems natural: Both have centripetal forces that attract artistic energy from the provinces and thrive on continual infusions of the new. Besides mixing street-wear and designer fashion, high and low culture, both cities tend to produce creators who shift easily between genres or even defy categorization. London-based graphic designer Anthony Burrill, for example, also works in film; musician Cornelius was represented at the exhibition by a DVD film and various meticulously designed tour goods.

Reflecting the increasing internationalization in both cities, both the Tokyo and London groups featured non-native artists. Deluxe, a loose artistic cooperative of designers, architects and musicians from the U.S., U.K. and Italy, exhibited under the Tokyo banner, while Shin and Tomoko Azumi, Japanese architects living in London, designed the exhibition.

But, as the event demonstrated, the two scenes do have their differences. While the current trends in London tend toward the gritty and homespun (Paul Davis' hand-drawn cartoons and Jessica Ogden's homemade, recycled fashions), much of the Tokyo scene is playful, sleek and deeply intertwined with technology.

Groovisions originally began as club-affiliated designers (most famously for Pizzicato Five's live show), but it is their virtual idol Chappie that is the focus at JAM. The menagerie of e-mail characters from Kazuhiko Hachiya's Post Pet were also prominent. As a virtual entity that has taken on a material life as a character collectible, Post Pet highlights the close relationship between consumption and art that is a significant feature of the Tokyo scene.

Nigo's A Bathing Ape streetwear label, a true triumph of savvy design and witty branding, exemplified this trend. A range of Bathing Ape T-shirts, a Bathing Ape camouflage sofa and Bathing Ape camouflage tape were lovingly displayed like the collectibles they have come to be. It was a vivid interrogation of the exhibition's main query: Where does junction between street culture end and high art begin?

Photographer Masayuki Yoshinaga was perhaps the most successful at fusing the two. His photos of bosozoku motorcycle gangs, shown at a satellite exhibition at the Dazed and Confused Gallery, are exuberant, warm portrayals of an often hidden subculture. At the same time, Yoshinaga's keen gaze is able to rise above merely describing or exploiting his subject.

Though many of the London artists are relatively unknown even at home, Yoshinaga, like several in the Japanese contingent, has been bubbling under in London's artistic subconscious for awhile. In Japan, however, he is a well-established name as are many of the other artists. Though JAM should certainly create a buzz when it comes to Tokyo next year, whether it is actually cutting-edge is open to debate.