In the 1960s, contemporary art objects, usually sculptures, were brought out of museums and placed in public spaces, lumped under the category of public art.

Looking back, Sokichi Sugimura, a promoter of public art, thinks his activities may have been driven too much by Western notions.

Sugimura, head of the Tokyo-based Public Art Research Institute, said his view of public art dramatically changed when he read a 2001 essay by Barbara Sandrisser, an aesthetic environment researcher in New York, titled "The Seductive Torii As Public Art."