Takako Saito (斉藤 陽子, Saitō Takako; 16 January 1929 – 30 September 2025) was a Japanese visual artist closely associated with Fluxus, the international collective of avant-garde artists that was active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s. Saito contributed a number of performances and artworks to the movement, which continue to be exhibited in Fluxus exhibitions to the present day. She was also deeply involved in the production of Fluxus edition works during the height of their output, and worked closely with George Maciunas.

Saito is best known for her special chess sets, which include Spice Chess, but her larger body of work focuses on crafting a variety of objects to be used in open-ended situations that create unexpected social relations. More recent exhibitions, such as the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen's 2017-18 exhibition Takako Saito: You + Me, have focused on the way Saito uses a playful process-based approach focused on the making of objects to blend her artistic practice with the activities and chores of daily life. Despite the fact that this blended approach often results in ambiguous objects that sit between the experimental sentiments of fine art and the practical concerns of design, her works have been collected by major museums and public collections across Europe, the United States, and Japan. The majority of her exhibitions have been held in Europe, where she traveled to and lived from 1968 on, includung during the later period of her life when she resided in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Saito was born in 1929 in Sabae-Shi, Fukui Province in Japan to a wealthy landholding family. As the second daughter among three siblings, she had a relatively free childhood for her position. In her middle school years, during WWII, she and her classmates were put to work in a factory that produced military parachutes. Saito's job was to spin threads into rolls, an activity that bears some resemblance to her later artmaking processes. After the war, the post-WWII land reforms enacted under the GHQ left her family with limited financial resources. When her father died in 1947, her mother became more rigid creating a rift between Saito and her family that would eventually lead her to live abroad.

In 1947, Saito's mother sent her to Tokyo to study psychology at the Japan Women's University, from which she graduated in 1950. She then took up a teaching post at a junior high school in 1951 where she remained until 1954. While teaching, in 1952 she became involved with the Sōzō Biiku (Sōbi), or the 'Creative Art Education' movement. Founded 1952 by Teijirō Kubo, the movement focused on encouraging free will through creative expression and experimentation. Through this movement Saito began studying various artistic media including oil painting, sculpture, printmaking, and watercolor. While attending a summer camp organized by the movement, Saito met Ay-O, an artist actively engaged in avant-garde groups in Japan, such as Demokurāto Bijutsuka Kyōkai (Democratic Artists Association). Through Ay-O, Saito learned about the avant-garde, first in Tokyo, and then, after he moved in 1958, in New York City.

Determined to live independently, Saito left for Hokkaidō in 1960 where she worked in construction for six months, but she soon realized her desire to continue making art. She moved back to Tokyo in 1961 where she explored artmaking more, but found the rigid hierarchies of the Japanese artists associations and arts institutions difficult to deal with as a self-taught member of Sobi. Intrigued by the reports being sent back by Ay-O, Saito also traveled to New York on a working visa in 1963, ostensibly to work as a designer for a textile wholesaler.

Through Ay-O, Saito met George Maciunas in 1964, and intrigued by the communal activities of Fluxus, she began working with the group. During her time with Fluxus, Saito was deeply involved in the production of Fluxus editions, sometimes as Maciunas' only assistant. For self-trained Saito, this was an opportunity to learn new production techniques and practice her skills at handcrafts, contributing to her later artistic productions. Saito was also briefly involved in the communal Fluxus dinners Maciunas hoped to hold as part of the broader communal ideal of Fluxus. As Fluxus member Mieko Shiomi recalled:

After a while, Maciunas proposed having dinner together every evening. In his opinion, buying food for many was more economical than buying for one... He called it Flux Dinner Commune. So George, Paik, Takako, Shigeko and I started this part-time collective life. For the first few days, the men went shopping and the girls cooked. However we found it inconvenient, because George came back rather late from his office and then often didn't buy what we wanted to cook.... It didn't last long, because we got jobs at night. George was discouraged, but bravely said, "Well, work comes first, dinner second."

Although Saito remained a part of the Fluxus movement throughout the 1960s and '70s, for her it was only one means of exploring her artistic commitment. She further expanded her experience through classes at New York University in summer 1964, the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1964 to 1966, and the Art Students League from 1966 to 1968, although these also served as justification for her continued visa.