The idea of holding a Yamaguchi Akira exhibition at a museum dedicated to horses is nothing short of brilliant. Credit the curators of Yokohama's Equine Museum for this inspired notion, as well as for their excellent execution of the show, which is up until May 29.

Such old-subverts-new tropes are nothing novel in contemporary Japanese art -- think hamburger-chomping geishas -- but Yamaguchi takes them several steps beyond satire into the realm of fantasy and science fiction. In these mishmashes of past, present, and future, one of his recurring motifs is the hybrid horse-motorbike. Yamaguchi's samurai not only ride into battle on these half-beast, half-machine creatures; they care for them in stables, repair them in medieval motorcycle shops, and dump them in scrapyards, where the horseheads are devoured by dogs and the bikes are scavenged for their engines and tires.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Yamaguchi's fascination with horses attracted the attention of the Equine Museum, which sits on land in Yokohama that was once Japan's first racetrack. The Negishi Racecourse was built in 1866 for the entertainment of the newly opened port's burgeoning foreign population, but quickly became a popular destination for the citizenry as well, including members of the imperial family. During World War II the Japanese Navy requisitioned the track and its stands, and the U.S. military took over the site when the war ended. Today a large U.S. Navy housing complex still surrounds the former track, which has been converted into a spacious public park. Sitting atop a hill in Yokohama's posh Yamate district, the park commands fine views of the city below, as well as of the long abandoned race-viewing stand, a glorious three-towered relic that still looms over the trees. When the course was returned to the city of Yokohama, the Japan Racing Association decided to build a museum there devoted to the track's history, horseracing, and horses in general. The Equine Museum of Japan opened in 1977.

Titled Uma-kagami -- literally "horse-mirror," with "mirror" here connoting something that is a model or paragon of its kind, a "horse among horses" if you will -- the Yamaguchi exhibition is timed to commemorate the museum's 40th anniversary, as well as the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Negishi Racecourse. Yamaguchi's works share the walls with kindred pieces from the museum's own impressive, if thematically selective, collection of horse-related art. This gives viewers a rare chance to see, for example, the artist's horse-bike "stable" scenes alongside the actual Edo-era paintings of stables that he emulated. Fine Yamato-e depictions of samurai in battle formation are on hand, as well as one of the epic early-Edo Rakuchu-rakugai zu (Scenes in and around Kyoto) panoramas of the ancient capital, another source of inspiration for Yamaguchi.