Tokyo National Museum
The Tokyo National Museum is Japan’s premier collection of Japanese Artwork and treasures. There are two main exhibition on display, one being the regular exhibition and the other a special exhibition where fixed theme exhibitons are held about five times a year.
The main exhibition is made up of four main galleries, The Honkan Japanese Gallery features the beauty of Japanese art with a chronological exhibition showing magnificent examples of the history of art in Japan. There are some spectacular examples of sculpture, ceramics and laquerware. The collection is shown on two floors, with the first showing swords, armor, masks and metal work while the second has paintings, screen printing, lacquerware and beautiful calligraphy.
The Toyokan Asian Gallery has artifacts from all over Asia. This exhibit opened in 1968 and has a facinating collection of non Japanese Eastern Art. Much of the exhibition is made up of artifacts from China and Korea with a sprinkling of other countries. There are a number of beautiful Buddha including a 11 faced Buddha from Xian in China dating back to the 11th century. Some of the Korean art dates back to 100BC including daggers from the Bronze Age.
The Heiseikan exhibition opened in 1999 and was built to house a superb collection of Japanese archaeological artifacts with items dating back 10,000 BC. Much of the collection is ceramic with some beautiful items on display including prehistoric figures, warriors, bowls ceramic animals and the like. There are many Haniwa figures on display, Haniwa a term which means clay ring, which was a process used to create beautiful earthenware sculptures which were made around the 4th – 7th century.
The Gallery of Horyuji Treasures houses as the name suggests Horyuji Treasures, these are ancient buddhist arts which were donated to the museum in return for finance to repair the Horyuji temple. There are more than 300 items in this collection including Buddhist statues, masks and beautiful screens.
The musem is easy to reach by rail, a few choices include the JR Line with a 10 minutes from Ueno or Uguisudani Station. The Ueno metro station is about a 15 minute walk and is services by the Ginza, Hibiya line.
for further information visit http://www.tnm.go.jp/
