To distract themselves from the sweltering summer heat, people in Japan have developed artful ways to amuse themselves with goldfish. Since the Edo period (1603-1868), they have gazed at goldfish swimming in cool ponds or played a game of scooping them from buckets with thin paper screens at summer festivals. Goldfish have been bred as a form of living art.

That is taken to a new level at an exhibition opening in July called "Eco Edo Nihonbashi Art Aquarium 2014--Coolness of Goldfish in Edo" in the central Tokyo neighborhood of Nihonbashi.

First held in 2011 to mark the centenary of the rebuilt version of the bridge called Nihonbashi, the exhibition features over 5,000 goldfish in tanks embellished with special lighting, projection mapping, music and scent. It has attracted three million viewers in its first three years, and past exhibits have resembled Disney productions with a hint of nightclub allure.

In one exhibit called "Kimono-rium," live goldfish and projection mapping were arranged to form the patterns of a kimono garment, a fusion of traditional culture, living creatures and modern technology.

Another exhibit called "Ohoku" is a three-meter-wide fishbowl complex meant to evoke the elegant world of the shoguns, Japan's military rulers during the Edo period. The long-tailed goldfish inside illuminated fishbowls elevated on a pedestal represent the lavishly dressed women who competed for the shogun's attention in his inner sanctum, according to Art Aquarium's news release.