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Tokyo National Museum

Largest Collection of National Treasures

The Tokyo National Museum is the oldest museum and is among the four national museums in Japan. The Tokyo National Museum has a collection of more than 110,000 precious artifacts from within Japan, as well as from various countries such as China, Korea, India, and Egypt.

The Tokyo National Museum 東京国立博物館 is located in Ueno Park in Tokyo, which started in 1872 and is Japan’s Oldest Museum. The Tokyo National Museum has a collection of more than 110,000 artifacts, including nearly 100 national treasures of Japan and more than 600 important cultural properties, as well as precious artifacts from various countries such as China, Korea, India, and Egypt. The Tokyo National Museum is one of the four major national museums in Japan, along with the Kyoto National Museum, the Nara National Museum, and the Kyushu National Museum, and ranks first for the quantity and quality of its collections.

Manywhere Trivia:
Tokyo has the third-largest number of museums in the world, after London and Beijing.

Japanese Armor

The Tokyo National Museum took its original form in 1872 when a fair was held in the Taisei Hall of the Yushima Sacred Hall in Tokyo, and the overwhelming number of visitors led to several extensions of the exhibition. 1881 saw the completion of the Tokyo National Museum’s main building in Ueno Park, a two-story red brick building that was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

Manywhere Trivia:
The imposing main lobby of the Tokyo National Museum was the setting for the head office of the Tokyo Chuo Banking Corporation in the hit Japanese drama Hanzawa Naoki 半沢直樹.

The current Main Building (Honkan 本館) was built in 1937, and is used as the Japanese Gallery which exhibits a wide range of valuable cultural artifacts from different periods of Japan, including ceramics, sculptures, swords, etc., starting from the Jomon period.

Dragon Head Decoration on the Top of a Bronze Vase

More than 300 treasures were presented to the Japanese Imperial Family by Horyu-ji Temple in Nara in the late 19th century, and were later transferred to the custody of the state. The Tokyo National Museum has established a separate Gallery of Horyu-ji Treasures 法隆寺宝物館 dedicated to this collection of Buddhist art treasures.

The Asian Gallery (Toyokan 東洋館), located on the east side of the main building, is devoted to Asian artifacts, with exhibits mostly from China, Korea, and India, including Chinese Buddhist statues, bronzes, and ceramics, as well as Indian Gandhara carvings, all of which are world-class masterpieces.