A painting long attributed to Moïse Kisling, titled *Kiki de Montparnasse* and held by Japan's Yamada Bee Company Group, has been identified as a forgery by notorious art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi. The discovery, reported by NHK, follows a wave of Beltracchi-linked fakes uncovered in Japanese museums and collections, including a purported Marie Laurencin portrait in Tokyo and a forgery of Heinrich Campendonk's *Girl with Swan* at the Museum of Art, Kochi. Beltracchi admitted to forging the Kisling around 1990, claiming he studied the artist deeply.
This case matters because it exposes the scale and persistence of Beltracchi's forgeries infiltrating major Japanese institutions and corporate collections, undermining trust in provenance and authentication. The revelations also highlight Japan's vulnerability to high-end art fraud, with multiple fakes surfacing in museums and private collections over the past year, prompting urgent reassessments of acquisition practices and the need for rigorous forensic analysis.