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Museums were rarely featured in travelogue descriptions nor, it seems, selected as subjects for postcards sent by tourists from the city, presumably because — unlike temples and shrines, or the grand hotels — they did not communicate the desired message about one’s travel experiences to audiences at home.
Nevertheless, they were often featured in guidebooks and (especially the Imperial Art Museum) included on recommended tours of the city. A selection of these are introduced below.
Kyoto Imperial Art Museum
Kyoto Imperial Art Museum
The Kyoto Imperial Art Museum (Kyōto Teishitsu Hakubutsu Kan 京都帝室博物館), often written in English as Kyoto Imperial Museum, the Art Museum or, simply, the Museum, opened in 1897 under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Household Ministry. Located close to the popular sightseeing spots of the Daibutsu and Sanjūsangendō, the museum was described at length in guidebooks for foreign tourists.
Rather than “modern art works,” Terry’s Japanese Empire (1914) noted, it was built to house and publicly display objects seen as — or in the process of being defined as — national treasures, from Kyoto’s temples, imperial properties, and private individuals.
Divided into three departments of History, Fine Arts, and Art Industry, the museum housed a diverse range of objects, including “a model of a metal- and bamboo-sheathed sailing craft built in 1855, historical documents relating to the assault on the British Minister [Harry Parkes] at Kyōto in 1867, a number of odd relics from Turkestan [… a collection] of coins with some confederate bills.” Terry’s Japanese Empire drew special attention to the “sculptured wood statuary of the fruitful 8th and 12th centuries” (1914, 430).
Reviews by official agencies in Japan, like the “Guide to Kyoto” in Tsūrisuto (Dec. 1914, 18), tended to highlight the following three objects, all part of the collection of Imperial Treasures: “an incense burner known as ‘Chidori-no-kōro,’ statue of Maya Fujin (the mother of Buddha), and some ancient metal mirrors.”
In 1924, it was gifted to the city as part of the marriage celebrations for Hirohito, soon to become Emperor Shōwa. From this point, it was officially renamed the Imperial Gift Museum of Kyoto (Onshi Kyōto Hakubutsukan 恩賜京都博物館), though it was more commonly known in English as the Kyoto Municipal Museum.
In 1952, the museum assumed its present title of Kyoto National Museum.
Left: Picture postcard of “The Museum, Kyoto” (n.d.). Personal collection. Centre: Picture postcard of “The Kyoto Museum of Imperial Gift” (c. 1928), when the museum was being used as the South Exhibition Ground for the Great Kyoto Enthronement Commemoration Exhibition. Personal collection
Kyoto City Commercial Hall
Kyoto City Commercial Hall
Across the road from the new Kyoto Prefectural Memorial Library (opened 1909), the Kyoto City Commercial Hall (Kyōto-shi Shōhin Chinretsu Jo 京都市商品陳列所, also referred to as Kyoto Commercial Museum and, more rarely, Industrial Art Museum in English) opened in 1910. These two buildings, both with designs overseen by architect Takeda Goichi (武田五一), helped develop “a new coordinated urbanscape to herald [Okazaki] park’s entry point” (Tseng 2018, 106). From the beginning, many guidebooks described the Commercial Hall at some length, in extremely positive terms.
The museum publication Kyoto: The Home of Typical Japanese (1914) shows how museums like this functioned, on the one hand, as agents and symbols of modernization. At the same time, however, they were also actively participates in the symbolic reinvention of Kyoto as the “old capital” — a repository of traditional customs and virtues — for visitors from overseas.
The museum also played a role in the marketing and consumption of Kyoto for foreigners unable to make the trip to the city. Its "Supply Agency Service" promised to "undertake to do your shopping in Kyoto ... free of charge," selecting, buying, packing, and sending articles to private buyers overseas (Kyoto: The Home of Typical Japanese 1914, 49–50).
Photograph (top) of the Commercial Hall in Kyoto Municipal Government, Kyoto Calls You (1929), 30–31. Review (bottom) in Terry’s Japanese Empire (1914), 478
The Kyoto City Commercial Hall was later demolished to make way for the Commemorative Kyoto Art Museum (Tairei Kinen Kyōto Bijutsukan 大礼記念京都美術館), which opened in 1933 (see below).
Images from Kyoto: The Home of Typical Japanese (n.p.: Kyoto Commercial Museum, 1914). On the one hand, the book includes photographs and descriptions of the innovations introduced under the careful guidance of the prefectural government, including new machine-weaving technologies in Kyoto's Nishijin weaving district (left). On the other, the hand-painted cover and full-colour illustrations seen on the right, which includes a detail from a picture of "'Cha-no-yu' (Tea Ceremony)," foreground an image of Kyoto as the unchanging "home of traditional Japanese."
Hirase Conchological Museum
Hirase Conchological Museum
Pioneering shell researcher Hirase Yōichirō (平瀬 與一郎) opened the Hirase Conchological Museum in 1913, using his own funds.
"It has a large and varied collection of shell specimens of all countries, designs with shells, and other interesting objects associated with shells," explained a review of the museum in Tsūrisuto (Dec. 1914, 19). "Lovers of mollusks should not omit paying a visit, which will be amply compensated."
The museum was located in an impressive modern building south of the Kyoto City Commemorative Zoological Garden (Kyoto Zoo), Hirase’s contribution to the cultural park that had been developing in Okazaki from the 1890s. It closed in 1919 after running into financial difficulties, and Hirase's shell collections were dispersed across Japan and to the US.
Hirase Yōichirō and Hirase Conchological Museum front (left) and interior (centre). As well as examples of shells from across the Japanese main islands and colonies in Taiwan, Karafuto (South Sakhalin), and Korea, the museum also exhibited shell-related objects, like these "Sword-scabbards and rack with shell designs" (right). Hirase Conchological Museum, The Album of the Hirase Conchological Museum (Kyoto: Hirase Yōichirō, 1915)
Photograph of the Art Museum soon after opening in 1933. Kyotodeasobo
Commemorative Kyoto Art Museum
Commemorative Kyoto Art Museum
In “the modern Kyoto spirit of dedicating large civic projects to each imperial milestone” (Tseng 2018, 196), the project to build a permanent, dedicated art museum in the city began soon after the 1928 Shōwa enthronement.
It opened in 1933, on the site previously occupied by the Kyoto City Commercial Hall, and was the first municipal art museum in Kyoto (and the second, after Tokyo, in Japan). Although an important addition to the redevelopment of the Okazaki area as a place of modern cultural pursuits, the Commemorative Kyoto Art Museum (Tairei Kinen Kyōto Bijutsukan, sometimes Municipal Modern Art Gallery in English) often received little more than a brief mention in prewar English guides to the city.
After an extensive redesign in 2020, it is now called the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art.
Yūrinkan Art Museum
Yūrinkan Art Museum
The Yūrinkan Art Museum (有鄰館, the present-day Yūrinkan Museum), a private art museum focused on Chinese antiquities in Okazaki, was established in 1926 by entrepreneur Fujii Zensuke (藤井善助), “a multimillionaire from Ōmi Province [Shiga Prefecture].”
The three-storey ferro-concrete structure, with a vermilion-lacquered octagonal hall on the roof, was designed by architect Takeda Goichi, one of the many constructions he oversaw in the area. The main guidebook series did not feature the Yūrinkan Museum, though Akiyama provided a glowing account of it, as “one of the most outstanding sights of the ancient capital” (Akiyama 1937, 159).
Photographs of the entrance (left) and interior (right) of the Yūrinkan Art Museum, from Aisabaro Akiyama, A Complete Guide to Kyoto, 2nd ed. (Kyōto: Japan Welcome Society, 1937)
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