In late April this year, two Tokyo galleries set up shop in Beijing just in time for the Olympic fervor, believing that Beijing, rather than Tokyo, was the place to bring contemporary Japanese art to an international audience. Sueo Mitsuma of Mizuma Gallery in Nakameguro opened Mizuma & One and Yumie Wada of Tsukiji's Wada Fine Arts, Y++.

No doubt they nodded, knowingly, when International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge rounded off his speech at the games opening by asserting, "Beijing — you are the host of the present and the gateway to the future." With all eyes fixed on what may be China's greatest PR spectacle, it seems likely that more Japanese, among others, will step into the near future with at least one foot in this "gateway."

For some the question may be, why not Tokyo?

"Well, three years ago, I didn't particularly like China really, and I wasn't considering anything at all!" Mitsuma candidly admitted in an interview. "But that changed last year, when the gallery took part in the China International Gallery Exposition."

An international art fair of growing importance in the region, CIGE has attracted a small but steady number of Japanese gallerists. While in Beijing for the fair, Mitsuma headed to the 798 Dashanzi art district, a complex of former state-run factories that has filled up with bookstores, artists' studios, galleries, cafes, nightclubs and other hip venues. Crowning these is the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, which held a red-carpet opening in October last year.

"We were simply taken by surprise," said Mitsuma. "Tokyo seemed really local by comparison. Everyone likes to think of it as the center of Asia, but it seems as though the art scene in Tokyo already can't compete with Beijing."

A short taxi ride north, Caochangdi has been the next art district to develop. It features gray-brick spaces designed by artist-architect Ai Weiwei, who worked on the "bird's nest" Olympic stadium.

"Mizuma & One" opened in one of Caochangdi's few remaining Ai Weiwei buildings, as a ready to go white-cube gallery with multiple exhibition spaces, a contrast to the somber Nakameguro building of the Tokyo gallery. For Y++, Wada opted for a rougher but substantially larger space. Despite complaints in Beijing that rents have become "too expensive," galleries the size of a small museum, such as Y++, can be run at a fraction of the cost of a cramped, nondescript Tokyo space — an obvious incentive to overseas galleries.

After Wada first exhibited at CIGE in 2004, she considered moving her whole operation to Beijing. Instead, she opened a small space in Tsukiji in March 2007, but — buoyed up by steady business — couldn't resist opening in Beijing as well.

It is not just the allure of a huge space and reduced running costs that has convinced these two to come to Beijing. The boom in art prices in China clearly had something to do with it as well.

"To be frank, it's almost as if Tokyo had no market at all," Mitsuma pointed out, before dishing out barrage of statistics. "Take for example auction transactions in China last year, which were ¥300 billion. Globally it was about ¥3 trillion; in Tokyo the total sales at auction, of all art, was a mere ¥250 billion, of which contemporary art was only about ¥25 billion. At Art Fair Tokyo, it's said there were good sales, amounting to about ¥10 billion, yet comparing this to the global figure it's almost the same as saying zero, isn't it?"

But Wada noted that opening in Beijing did not really change her client base.

"At the moment, Japanese account for about 40 percent of my clients, then about 40-50 percent are 'Asian,' then 10 percent European," she says. Both galleries point to collectors from Taiwan, Hong Kong, overseas Chinese from South East Asia, as well as Koreans, as a significant market of steady buyers. As these clients often travel to buy artworks, a trip to Tokyo or Beijing is much the same to them; many may have business in China anyway. Moreover, dedicated Japanese collectors don't mind flying to Beijing, as many did for the openings.

The first one to the capital

In truth, Sueo Mitsuma and Yumie Wada are relative latecomers to Beijing. The acknowledged pioneer is Tokyo Gallery, the first Japanese gallery to open in Beijing. In 2002, it opened Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (BTAP), becoming the first gallery — indeed, one of the first businesses — to renovate a factory in the 798 Dashanzi district. This was just as the SARS epidemic was about to hit, years before the Chinese art market really began its boom in 2005-2006.

A dozen or so Korean galleries had also arrived en masse at that time and etched out their own niche in yet another renovated factory area, called Jiuchang. This includes two huge exhibition spaces for Arario gallery, which now operates in Seoul, Beijing and New York. Some Korean galleries also moved into the Caochangdi area, and mostly promote a combination of big-name overseas and Chinese artists alongside contemporary Korean art.

This mixture of local promotion on a global stage perhaps best characterizes the approach of Mitsuma and Wada. Mitsuma insists that the Beijing gallery is not simply a "sister gallery" and that he will be looking for new talent in China and the rest of Asia.

Wada is less certain. While not ruling out the possibility of representing Chinese artists, she made the point that many Chinese artists sidestep galleries altogether by selling direct from their studios. She also matter-of-factly suggested that they would probably deal with local galleries more readily anyhow.

Both of these approaches are distinct from Tokyo Gallery's pioneer efforts, which quickly won local respect. For its opening exhibition, it brought in local curator Feng Boyi and thereafter concentrated on presenting emerging local artists. Working with artists from Japan, China and Korea, the gallery operates as a single entity under the name Tokyo Gallery+BTAP for all events, whether in Tokyo or Beijing.

Both galleries claim, pragmatically, to not have their sights set on a future market of Chinese collectors, but add that it would naturally be welcome. That said, Mitsuma divulged that he had spent part of the previous day at major local collector Zhang Rui's 1,500-sq.-meter house cum museum, introducing some of his artists' work. Zhang's collection, of which select pieces are installed throughout his mansion, goes beyond the blue-chip Chinese names that typically attract local buyers. Some of China's newly wealthy, seeing contemporary art as an opportunity for quick investment returns, purchase but don't really collect, acting more like speculators.

Although drawn to Beijing for similar reasons, Mitsuma and Wada have remarkably different visions for their galleries. Mitsuma's opening party announced his arrival to the local scene with steady press before and after and an exhibition showcasing works by a number of the gallery's best-known artists, including Aida Makoto, Yamaguchi Akira and Kondoh Akino. Around the corner at Y++, the atmosphere reflects the charismatic Wada's personal, "one step at a time" approach. Despite covering almost 400 sq. meters, the gallery chose to open with a solo painting exhibition, eager to see artist Hara Takafumi rising up to the challenge of filling the space. The current show is another solo exhibition, by Ebihara Yasushi, also of paintings created specifically for this huge space. Although she hadn't advertised the opening, the press was present.

It is interesting to imagine how the galleries' artists will respond to a different exhibition environment, which they may only have experienced in the context of a museum, or biennale, and even then not as a solo show.

Though nobody would name names, both galleries admitted having been approached by colleagues keen to discuss the particulars of opening in China.

Meanwhile, in Tokyo, new clusters of young art galleries are forming, such as NADiff a/p/a/r/t in Ebisu. This follows last year's new art fair, the small but well supported 101 Tokyo, notable for its mandate of being young, contemporary, international and Tokyo-based. But is it too little too late for those frustrated with stubbornly insular markets and buyers? Is it easier to try their luck in a more proactively international environment?

Mitsuma's press release leaves little uncertainty where some people's hopes lie, with a dubious nod to the old helmsman himself: "As famously stated by Mao Zedong, I too believe the 'East Wind' is prevailing over the 'West Wind,' and I am convinced the center of this new movement is Beijing." This seems like an argument for an alternative to "Western" internationalism, and perhaps that is precisely what Beijing offers.

Some will no doubt scoff at the actual substance of such "internationalism," wondering how long the Olympic high will last. But others need no more convincing. As Wada chuckled rhetorically, "Compared to Tokyo, it feels more international, right?"