Around them, staff are busy installing a new show – placing sculptures, hanging images and, up on a ladder, affixing the show's sign, which says: "Kensuke Todo: A Survey". There it is, writing on the wall. Proof for the couple that their son has made it as an artist.

Over by the door, the man himself looks on, fondly amused. His parents have flown over from Japan especially for the show's opening, and are clearly bowled over.

"They're totally impressed by this amazing gallery," Todo says, laughing. "They're saying, 'Are you really sure this is your exhibition?'"

Todo himself is just as thrilled, unabashedly so. The Japanese-born artist has lived in Canberra for 10 years and, at one stage, had a stint at the Drill Hall working as an installer. He remembers looking around him then – at the high ceilings, worn wood floors and endless possibility of the spare, clean space – and wondering if his own work would ever hang in such a space.

Seeing the exhibition installed and almost ready for showing, it's hard to imagine a more appropriate space for Todo's spare, elegant steel sculptures – all clean lines and Japanese sensibility. But in fact, the Zen themes – staircases, horizontal planes, futons – are an irony that Todo has had to reconcile when finding his voice as an artist. Born in historic Kyoto, Japan's capital before Tokyo, he first came to Australia in 1999 as an art student, ostensibly to do a six-month exchange at the ANU School of Art. Even back then, he says, he wanted to learn more about "Western concepts of space", and how these differed from the distinctive Japanese approach.

He recalls arriving with virtually no English. "I had no idea what was going on, basically, and I couldn't understand what people were saying," he says.

"But people were very kind to me, and by the time I had finished that exchange program, I was beginning to understand what was going on and had made friends, and I understood how I could use the workshop."

He decided to try and extend his exchange program, an idea greeted with enthusiasm by his lecturer here. The university agreed, and he duly let his lecturer in Japan know. But the message was somehow not passed on to the powers that be at his university in Japan.

"One day they rang my parents and said, 'Where's Kensuke Todo? He hasn't turned up to his class?' And my mum said, 'He's still in Australia, what are you talking about? It's all agreed!'" Todo says.

He was later informed that if the university had been told of his plan to stay on in Australia for another six months, they never would have agreed. It would not have been in keeping with the rigid protocols of Japanese universities. He was, he says, "totally lucky" that he hadn't stuck to the rules. He returned to Japan after his time here was up, completed his bachelor's degree and returned to Canberra for another one-year stint to do a master's degree. His studies completed, he once again went home, took a job in a factory and hit a creative wall.

Todo found himself longing to return to Australia.

"I spent a year in a factory, and I thought I might make something while in Japan," he says. "My father has a workshop, and I have friends who are artists, so I thought I would get pretty good motivation because my ideas often come from memories of Japan. But for some reason, nothing came out.

"I think my work is based on my memory, it's a bit like nostalgia maybe."

In other words, his Japanese sensibilities and his artistic response to them were only able to emerge when he was far from home.

"When I'm in Australia, my memory of Japan comes back to my mind … Usually it's not a special moment, but very everyday," Todo says. "Like when you're tired at work, or riding a train, the scenery and cityscape just passes your eyes and suddenly you start looking at buildings and think, 'Why is the building that shape?'"

The only solution was to come back to Canberra's small, welcoming arts community and do another master's, in visual arts. That was in 2004 and he still hasn't left. He lives in Lyneham and has a studio in Mitchell, through the Australian National Capital Artists program.

The Drill Hall show, curated by Peter Haynes, is by the far the largest show Todo has ever staged – hence his parents' awestruck gazing – and has been three years in the making. His steel sculptures, for all their aesthetic austerity, are incredibly labour-intensive, some taking three or four months to create.

"Stairs are a motif for me for some time – [it is] about ascension," he says.

"In 2003, when I was studying the master's course, I realised that even though I wanted to incorporate Western ideas in my work, I felt myself [to be] really Japanese connected …Without understanding my background, I wouldn't be able to incorporate the Western ideas."

Having grown up in Kyoto surrounded by some of the most outstanding examples of Japanese architecture, Todo had always been interested in design and had originally planned to study architecture rather than art. His father is a teacher in architecture and interior design. This interest has inevitably fed into his work.

"At that time, I was interested in architecture because the understanding of space for sculpture is very important," he says, citing Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

"He was talking about Japanese architecture and the understanding of space based on indigenous people – the spacious concept which is drawn horizontally. So if you've got a Zen garden or a Japanese traditional garden, the horizontal axis is very strongly presented and the reason [for that] is that Japanese indigenous people believe that god lives beyond the ocean, not up in the sky. So that's why Japanese architecture is very elongated.

"Ever since then I've been interested in a more horizontal axis and understanding of sculpture, so that's why the staircases are represented sideways, suggesting that people conceptually walk sideways and travel sideways."

Another motif in his work, in the section entitled Two Elements, is the traditional Japanese futon which, when rendered in steel and placed alongside or on top of angular steel beams, is a striking example of contrasts between hard and soft. The show's largest works – Insufficient and Envelop – are made up of metres-long steel rectangles with futons resting across them. And, in the most touchingly evocative example of Japanese tradition, one work, Drape, is a wall piece, with the futon resting as though it was hung out to dry on a balcony, a common sight in Japanese cities.

"It's a bit contradictory because I came here to understand and wanted to express more Western sculptural ways," Todo says.

"But at some stage you have to accept how you are."

Kensuke Todo: A Survey is showing at the Drill Hall Gallery until June 29.