If you happened to be in Tokyo this past weekend and like Iron Maiden, there was a rare opportunity to see an astonishing collection of Maiden memorabilia accumulated by Yu Shimada. Shimada is widely acknowledged, even by the band, as Iron Maiden’s No.1 fan, so MetalTalk Japan popped along for a visit and a chat.
Yu Shimada – Iron Maiden Exhibition 2026 – Sugamo, Tokyo
Yu has seen the band so many times in so many different countries that he has difficulty remembering them all. But the gigs run well into the hundreds, and he has seen them multiple times in almost every country they have played in.
Every concert he goes to, he buys every piece of merch and scours the local shops for anything else he can get his hands on. His collection is so big that he has to store it in two houses, his and his mum’s.
He graciously took the time to show me around. Quite by chance, Gil Weston, Girlschool’s bass player from 1982 to 1987, happened to be in town, so we took her along as well.
Almost everything at the exhibition belongs to Yu Shimada. “Only a few things like a guitar and a few empty bottles over there are not mine,” Yu told MetalTalk Japan.
Yu does not spend much time on the internet sourcing items for his collection. He collects mainly when travelling. “I’ve been to many countries,” he said, “so I visit a lot of shops, record stores where I found these point-of-purchase displays. Lots from the merchandise tents as well.”
All these programmes and all the records are all from around the world.
“I keep each country from A, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil, Bolivia, then Canada, Croatia, all the way to Yugoslavia. Of course, I don’t have all the countries, but I try. “
The rarest in his collection is the famous Soundhouse Tapes, and he has three copies. “Two are bootlegs,” he says. “The original has the opening at the top, but the others open at the side.”
The jackets are official merchandise and the football was used in an Iron Maiden football match. “It was in Oslo, Norway,” Yu says. “2006 or maybe 2008. There were not so many fans there, only our friends and maybe 20 people watching.
“Iron Maiden lost, I think. The ball was played for 90 minutes, and then when the game ended, I saw this ball coming to me. Nobody cared about this ball. So I took it, and then I asked Steve to sign it.”
If the football is one of the rarest, or unique things in the exhibition, the most unusual is the Eddie. “This was from the No Prayer On The Road Tour,” Yu says. “Only used in Europe. They played in Japan but didn’t take him, and neither in America.”
This really is an amazing collection. “About half is stored at my original house where my mum is living,” Yu says, “and the rest are from my present house with my wife.”
The scale of this project is extraordinary and for any Iron Maiden fan, this collection will keep you engrossed for hours.
