PAC-MAN MIKOSHI

What if PAC-MAN wasn’t just a game character, but a sacred object?​

PAC-MAN MIKOSHI is a metal artwork by Japanese artist Akiyoshi Mishima, who reinterpreted the world-famous character “PAC-MAN” as a portable shrine for a Japanese festival. By reconstructing the former symbol of nostalgia as a symbol of memory, prayer, and festivals, the work attempts to “reboot the soul” of the city of the future.​

​The work contrasts two visions of urban life: a monochrome maze, representing the mechanical routines of city living, and the vivid, glowing PAC-MAN, who becomes a mythic presence—a god carried not by shoulders, but by data, memories, and longing. The ghosts, once game enemies, now drift like ancestral spirits through a pixelated metropolis.​

​Rooted in the Japanese concept of hare and ke—the sacred and the everyday—this piece invites us to treat the act of play as ritual, and the festival as a moment of resistance against disconnection. It doesn’t just revive a character; it revives the spirit of communal celebration in a hyper-digital age.​

By turning game into shrine, and nostalgia into mythology, PAC-MAN MIKOSHI asks:​
“In a world of systems, can you carry your own story?”​