Irasutoya: the best-known illustrator in Japan, that you’ve probably never heard of

In Japan, a largely unknown artist has a paradoxically outsized influence on public design through his service – Irasutoya. His work is so omnipresent that some have described Irasutoya as a “social infrastructure”. Due to its generous licensing model, the graphics are everywhere, from NHK news segments and local ads for a farmer’s market to descriptions on how to use the microwave at a convenience store. Even on a remote mountaintop in Nikko, I spotted an Irasutoya illustration on a sign warning against drone use.

I have a soft spot for the unsung heroes of design. While many in Japan may recognise his work, Irasutoya’s founder is not a lionised design figure like Kenya Hara or Yusaku Kamekura. In fact, most people probably haven’t heard his name. The source of these thousands of illustrations is a single man: Takashi Mifune, the creator and sole operator of Irasutoya. In 2012, he started uploading new illustrations daily with an unwavering work ethic and amassed a library of over 25,000 images before shifting to an irregular schedule in 2021. Yet, despite his influence, Mifune remains behind the scenes, avoiding interviews and keeping a low profile.

This paradox of an anonymous illustrator quietly shaping an entire country’s visual language proves that when high-quality design is open and accessible, it becomes the default.

The Significance of Defaults in Visual Culture

Defaults play a significant role in shaping the aesthetics of a time and place. In a Western context, when I think of the word “clip art,” an image of an oblong monochrome character clicking its heels midair in excitement or throwing its hands up in frustration pops into my head. Screen Beans, created by Cathy Belleville in 1995, became a fixture of PowerPoint and Word documents from the late 90s into the 2000s. At its peak, Microsoft’s clip art library housed over 100,000 preinstalled images, shaping digital aesthetics for an entire era.

By 2014, Microsoft discontinued its clip art library and replaced it with a Bing search panel for license-free images, resulting in a hodgepodge of images cleared through Creative Commons. The result was fragmentation; without a controlled source of imagery, no modern equivalent of Screen Beans has emerged. Yet in Japan, Irasutoya has become what Microsoft’s clip art once was: a default so deeply embedded that it has become an inextricable part of public-facing design and is shaping the country’s visual vernacular today.

How Accessibility Creates Ubiquity

Irasutoya’s success is not just about style or abundance but also accessibility. Its clip art is free for personal and commercial purposes, with a licensing model that allows up to 20 images for free and charges only 1,000 yen per additional image beyond that. Irasutoya’s website is open, intuitive, and primarily ad-supported, unlike many stock image sites that require logins and expensive subscriptions or have pricey per-image licensing costs. Irasutoya is unique in that there is barely a barrier to entry besides internet access, making it the first and sometimes only choice for stock imagery.

This phenomenon is not unique to Japan. On a recent work trip to Vietnam in 2024, I noticed another example of how accessibility shapes visual culture, this time in typography. Vietnam’s graphic design industry is still developing, shaped by its complex linguistic needs and relatively young design history. Because professional design services and custom typefaces are not yet widely recognised as necessities, many businesses rely on default system fonts.

I was surprised by the ultra-bold and bubbly display font, Cooper Black, that was seemingly everywhere, from café menus to storefront signage. My Saigon-based friend and type designer Cao Xuân Đức explained that many business owners simply select the first appealing font in their publishing software. Without a strong tradition of custom typography and with limited affordable typefaces supporting Vietnamese diacritics, Cooper Black has become the natural default. Over time, as numerous people and organisations repeatedly make these choices, they reinforce themselves: what was once just an available option becomes the norm. The result is a typographic landscape inadvertently shaped by the accessibility of design resources.

Just as Cooper Black is now synonymous with Vietnamese signage, Irasutoya has become inseparable from Japanese public graphics.

Style and Cultural Adaptability

One of Irasutoya’s key strengths is its simple, manga-like style, which makes it universally understandable while remaining distinctly Japanese. The bright, friendly, and expressive illustrations are suitable for everything from public park signs to corporate presentations. This approach aligns with broader Japanese design principles. As Chris Palmieri, co-founder of Tokyo-based design and research studio AQ, explains, “In Japan, illustrations are often used to soften messages or information that could come off as serious or intimidating, especially when introducing new or complex concepts. Irasutoya seems to fit very neatly into this pattern.”

Another reason for Irasutoya’s dominance is its hyper-specificity. Unlike generic stock images, Mifune’s clip art library reflects contemporary Japanese culture with impressive timeliness. At the time of writing (in spring), the current homepage features recent uploads including a seasonal illustration of a 桜吹雪 sakura-fubuki (a flurry of cherry blossom petals resembling a blizzard), a drawing explaining the slang term お風呂キャンセル界隈 (used by people who feel too tired or lazy to bathe), and a snake with grilled mochi on its head – representing a celebration of the Year of the Snake in 2025.

Mifune’s ability to adapt to cultural trends and current events has made Irasutoya even more indispensable. When Japan announced new paper currency designs in July 2024, he released corresponding clip art illustrations the same day. This cultural specificity gives Irasutoya an edge over other free image repositories, which often lack such tailored content.

The Future of Free Defaults

Irasutoya demonstrates how free, high-quality design resources can embed themselves into everyday life. Yet, as artificial intelligence continues to threaten the livelihoods of artists and illustrators in Japan and beyond, there is growing concern about the impact of overreliance on free imagery that’s AI-generated or otherwise. Of course, if large corporations have the budget to support creative labour, they should continue to commission artists and illustrators. But unlike AI-generated imagery, Irasutoya functions as a public utility, serving non-commercial and low-budget sectors like education and healthcare while reducing reliance on professional designers for everyday visuals. The ubiquitousness of Irasutoya has resulted in its visual aesthetic coming to represent a kind of neutrality in Japanese public design, one that arises from deliberate choice rather than laziness or cost-cutting.

Defaults in design are often regarded as uninspired. The 2010s saw a wave of graphic designers rejecting default fonts in favor of custom and hand-drawn lettering, only for a counter-movement to later emerge, embracing default typefaces like Times and Arial in defiance of design elitism. But defaults aren’t just placeholders; they also shape cultural identity over time. Irasutoya is more than just a convenient design choice – it has become a recognisable visual language embedded in Japan’s public consciousness.

Few artists have influenced an entire nation’s aesthetic as subtly yet profoundly as Mifune. His work simplifies information, creates harmony in otherwise mismatched content, and brings a friendly neutrality to everything from government documents to local signage. The next time you’re in Japan, look around – once you notice Irasutoya, you’ll never unsee it.

Closer Look

Ray selects some exhibitions and a new restaurant to check out if you’re in Tokyo this month.

• National Art Center Tokyo currently has an exhibition called Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989–2010, featuring works by contemporary Japanese artists from the last few decades.

• My friends at the design studio HAUS helped open a mushroom-themed junk food restaurant called Kinoko Social Club in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa that cultivates mushrooms using the area’s local compost. So cool!

• Mori Art Museum currently has an art exhibition titled Machine Love, on the themes of AI, VR, and AR that’s worth checking out.

• Tokyo-based design studio, Postalco, is exhibiting its modular furniture concept at the Karimoku Research Center.