SHIRAFU: Journal of Art Criticism is a Japan-based online journal dedicated to the publication of essays and critical writing on contemporary art. Articles are published twice a year, while reviews include regular monthly contributions from the editorial team, alongside criticism, exhibition reviews, book reviews, and other texts submitted by external contributors, which are published online on a rolling basis. Content is published in Japanese and English.

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　　The journal continues the critical concerns developed through its predecessor, G.O.EN PROJECT, and takes the decentring of discourse and institutional structures surrounding contemporary art as one of its principal editorial orientations.

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　　In Japanese, shirafu refers to a sober state: either having consumed no alcohol, or remaining in one’s ordinary state without being overcome by intoxication. The journal adopts this term as a critical attitude towards contemporary art—one that seeks to maintain a certain distance from the value judgements, institutional authorities, prevailing trends, and established discourses that surround it, and to reconsider its objects through theory and criticism. Rather than accepting existing conditions as self-evident, SHIRAFU takes as its point of departure the question of how they have been constituted under particular historical, social, and institutional conditions.

　　Accordingly, the journal does not confine its discussions to any particular region, institution, or established art-historical framework. It engages with diverse practices, developments, and debates emerging across art scenes both within and beyond Japan. By introducing and documenting these activities, SHIRAFU seeks to create a space in which discourses arising from different geographical, intellectual, and critical positions can intersect and generate new forms of critical dialogue.