Art in Japan>Asian Art 100B.C.E.-1930>Capital Assets: Tokyo Museum Guide

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Capital Assets: Tokyo Museum Guide

by John McGee

Don't miss sculptures in the sun at the Hakone Open-air Museum (Photo: Georgia Jacobs)

According to the Japan Museum Association,Tokyo has more than 200 museums dedicated to the marvelous and the mundane—ukiyo-e, fire, drums, curry, you name it. The city has all the institutions befitting a capital, with national galleries for  traditional, Western and modern art, film and science as well as metropolitan museums focused on contemporary art, photography, art deco and city history. 

Tokyo also has unique local variations on the cultural storehouse, such as hotels (New Otani, Okura), converted houses (Hara Museum), and crafts shops (the tiny museums in Sumida-ku). There are also department stores (Sogo, Daimaru) that lure customers with temporary shows of popular art and industry giants (TEPCO, NTT/ICC, Yebisu) that run interactive rec rooms promoting their products. Even "galleries" sometimes fit the bill: Tokyo Opera City Gallery and GA Gallery run only temporary exhibitions—both lack permanent collections—but are curated like museums. And some of the most entertaining exhibitions are kitsch celebrations of the city's unique charms, like tobacco, ramen and parasites. 

The following museum guide introduces all that's wonderful and weird about the Tokyo museum scene—may you find the time to explore them all!

Time frames

Many people save their museum-going for blockbuster exhibitions of the most famous artists, but unrelenting crowds can seriously detract from your viewing pleasure. Unless you like looking at the back of heads, try to visit such shows on weekdays, and preferably in the first two weeks of its opening. Mornings would seem like the best time to go, but often noon is a better option as busloads of retirees tend to arrive when the doors open and then thin out by lunchtime. Better yet, try a smaller museum, e.g. the Shoto, Nezu or Ota museums, and you will be virtually alone. Another strategy is to go to Kyobashi, Shibuya or Ueno, where  options are many and diverse. Look for discount coupons, usually good for ¥100-200 off, at museums, galleries and in the backseat of taxis. 

Old school 

To get a deeper understanding of traditional Japanese culture and to see some fine works of Japanese art, the oldest and biggest museum—Tokyo National Museum (TNM)—is the place to start. This huge complex of buildings in Ueno Park has permanent collections of exquisite kimonos, carved wooden Buddhas, ink paintings and many national treasures. Admission to the main collections is reasonable, and sometimes even free for non-Japanese. In addition to the Japanese collection, TNM has a building dedicated to non-Japanese Asian antiquities and another, the Gallery of Horyu-ji Treasures, a modern building designed by Yoshio Taniguchi (who also did the new MOMA building in New York) that houses dozens of tiny bronze Buddhas and other ancient treasures from Horyu-ji Temple in Nara, the first Buddhist temple in Japan. Temporary exhibitions fill a fourth building and tend to be excellent but crowded blockbusters. 

Other museums explore some of the same themes from different angles. You have to remove your shoes to enter the traditional two-story building of the Japan Folk Crafts Museum (Nihon Mingeikan), but looking at their fine collection of 17,000 objects, including woven fabrics, ceramics, lacquer ware and other crafts in slippered feet is like a private viewing in a friend's lavish home. The museum is in Komaba, a quiet, upscale residential neighborhood next to a campus of Tokyo University and not far from Shibuya and Yoyogi. 

Nezu Institute of Fine Arts has a small but significant collection of traditional Japanese arts and crafts bunched up next to a gem of a Japanese garden with ponds and teahouses in tony Aoyama. 

You can slide along wood and tatami floors while looking at one of the best Japanese collections of ukiyo-e and other woodblock prints at the Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art, just off the busy streets around Harajuku station. The space isn't large enough to exhibit all of the museum's collection of 12,000 prints at once, but they always manage to show off popular favorites by artists like Hokusai. 

In Sangubashi, the Sword Museum unsheathes the deadly elegance of the traditional katana. 

The National Museum of Western Art, the only national institution dedicated to Western art, is housed in a Le Corbusier-designed building in Ueno Park. Most of its small but good collection of primarily European and American art (from 15th-century icons to Monet and Jackson Pollock) was assembled in the early 1900s by shipping magnate Kojiro Matsukata. Rodin's monumental Gates of Hell welcomes visitors near the front entrance.

Right about now 

Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MoT), in Kiba
(Photo courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo)

Contemporary art also enjoys a prominent position in public and private spaces throughout the city. Hara Museum of Contemporary Art is far from the station, but usually worth it: some of the best contemporary art shows in Tokyo originate or stop at this converted 1938 Bauhaus-style home. 

The city-owned Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MoT) holds big exhibitions in its big spaces. They have a permanent collection of Japanese and non-Japanese modern and contemporary work, as well as huge galleries for temporary exhibitions which include art and architecture from around the world. Though somewhat inconveniently located in Kiba, the museum, an adjacent park and several galleries in the area make it a good half-day trip. 

GA Gallery's architecture exhibitions show what's being built now. Established by Global Architecture founder and publisher Yukio Futagawa to introduce contemporary world architecture, the gallery also has an excellent bookstore. 

With money from Odakyu Railways, NTT and others, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery is one of Tokyo's largest and best-funded private contemporary art spaces. It operates like a kunsthalle, showcasing traveling shows from around the world and initiating its own progressive exhibitions of Japanese and international artists. Upstairs is NTT/ICC Gallery, run by telecommunications giant Nippon Telephone and Telegraph. It explores the leading edge of media design and media arts through a small permanent interactive collection and temporary shows. 

The National Museum of Modern Art, Film Center attracts viewers to screenings from their permanent collection of Japanese and foreign films. It also has a museum of film equipment and ephemera, as well as a gallery for temporary exhibitions of film posters, photos and other film-related objects.

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, a city-owned shrine to the shutter, has three floors for temporary exhibitions, a permanent display in the basement dedicated to trompe-l'oeil, antique visual toys, a small library and a gift shop. For those interested more in the object than the image, the JCII Camera Museum has 4,600 cameras, including the only museum-owned Giroux Daguerreotype Camera in the world. 

Past lives 

A number of museums help explain the traditional Japanese lifestyle and how it has changed over time. The hydroplaning spaceship structure of the Tokyo Metropolitan Edo-Tokyo Museum may look futuristic, but inside there's a down-to-earth display of items from more than 400 years of the city's development from the Edo Period to today, including the Nihonbashi Bridge, an old theater stage, and wartime artifacts. 

Two outdoor museums reveal that the Japanese haven't always lived in concrete shoe boxes. See for yourself as you walk through thatched roof farmhouses, Western-style merchant houses, tea huts and other authentic dwellings trucked in from rural Japan at the Japan Open-Air Folk House Museum (Nihon Minka-en). It's in the green hills of suburban Kawasaki, next to the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art. Another fantastic outdoor architecture museum is the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum (Edo-Tokyo Tatemono-en) in Musashi-Koganei. The museum features structures of great cultural value related to the city's past such as a number of traditional wooden shops—a soy-sauce store, bar and bathhouse—and modernist residences from the 1920s. 

Planes, trains, and automobiles at the Transportation Museum in Akihabara include the old steam engine that ran from Shimbashi to Yokohama at the end of the 19th century. For a contemporary challenge, you can try your hand at driving a virtual shinkansen. But do it before visiting the Beer Museum Yebisu. Here, old ads run on TV monitors and interactive displays take you on a virtual micro-tour of the brewing process. It's inside Ebisu Garden Place, on the site of a former Sapporo Brewery. But be warned: no free samples. 

Young at heart

Families can learn while having fun at several science-oriented museums. At the Fire Museum, the Tokyo Fire Department has created models and audio-visual installations to burn one of Tokyo's worst recurring problems into your memory. Plus, for the little boy in your life, fire trucks. 

With something to gross out nearly everybody, the Parasite Museum—started by a Japanese physician—defines nastiness. This is the place to get up close and personal with a 29-foot-long tapeworm, photos of elephantiasis victims, and fish infested with bleeding ulcers. Yuck. They sell T-shirts and postcards that are sure to impress your friends. 

Walk-throughs of power generators and interactive games at the TEPCO Electric Energy Museum bear light on the production and distribution of energy. You're paying for it so enjoy it: the seven-floor museum is run by Tokyo Electricity Power Company. 

The National Science Museum in Ueno Park has everything in the scientific realm--in Japanese (there's an English guidebook available at the front desk). 

The Nature Study Institute and Park is nearly 50 acres of primeval forest in Meguro used to study the characteristics of the original Musashino Plain. Admission is limited, so you can enjoy the turtle-filled ponds and rolling hills in relative peace. Picnic tables are made of boulders. Next-door is the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, an art deco museum and former imperial residence.

For the enthusiast 

See what's shakin' at the Tobacco and Salt Museum (Photo courtesy Tobacco and Salt Museum)

The otaku (geek or nerd) concept runs deep in Japanese culture. There's a museum dedicated to the collection and/or preservation of just about anything you can think of. 

You're not the only one to imagine that the Beatles, and especially Yoko Ono's late husband, are incredibly popular in Japan. The collection of personal memorabilia, notebooks, and other effects at Saitama's John Lennon Museum is a must for fans. 

The uplifting displays of thousands of kites from around the world at the Kite Museum in Nihonbashi include colorful Japanese woodblock-printed versions, while the Drum Museum in Asakusa lets you beat to the sound of your own. 

The Ramen Museum in Yokohama feeds you everything about the hearty noodle, including a collection of more than 300 ramen bowls, housed inside a recreation of 1950s shitamachi. Should you get hungry, eight real ramen shops create the taste of Japan's four ramen regions, not to mention that unmistakable smell of boiling pig bones. Change a few ingredients and you get the Curry Museum, also in Yokohama. 

Sounds like a mundane subject, but the displays at the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Shibuya are quite instructive in the history, production and use of these two essentials of Japanese life. The racks of cigarette packages from around the world are a graphic designer's dream. 

Learn to love The Man at Kyobashi's Metropolitan Police Department Museum. Sit on a real Kawasaki police motorcycle with flashing lights (alas, no bicycle display) or peer into a heli-cop-ter. Just remember to keep your hands where they can see them. 

Explore the history and production process of things like rubber baseballs, alloy casting, tabi (traditional wooden sandals), cigarette lighters, noh masks and other crafts at the tiny "museums" of Sumida-ku. To set up a visit and get more information and a map, contact the Sumida-ku Cultural Affairs Department (most proprietors speak little or no English).

Sunshine on your shoulders 

If the weather's nice (ha ha), pack a lunch and head to one of the cultural institutions set inside the region's expansive parks such as Ikuta Green Belt (Nihon Minka-en, Taro Okamoto Museum of Art), Todoroki Green (Kawasaki City Museum), Kinuta Park (Setagaya Art Museum), Kiba Park (Museum of Contemporary Art--MoT), Koganei Park (Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum) and the Nature Study Institute and Park (Teien Art Museum). 

The ultimate version is The Hakone Open-Air Museum, where you can clamber among modern sculpture by Henry Moore, Picasso and others in the mountains and fresh air of Hakone National Park. The Pola Museum (French Impressionism, Japanese ceramics, Nihon-ga, etc.) and Lalique Museum are also nearby.

Before you go 

Keep in mind that many museums have spotty exhibition schedules. They sometimes take a month-long (or more) hiatus between exhibitions during which they may be closed or have only a limited display. Check the listings at local resources such as Metropolis magazine or website, or call ahead. Also, though English labels and guides are often available at the larger museums, in general don't expect extensive English information on temporary exhibitions or at smaller museums. 

©2006 John McGee

©2006-2008 John McGee. All Rights Reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission.