Kyoto National Museum

Introduction

Opened in 1897, the Kyoto National Museum is one of Japan's four national museums alongside Tokyo, Nara and Kyushu, with a clear remit: a millennium of Kyoto Buddhist art, early modern painting, calligraphy, textiles, lacquer and archaeology. Its holdings run to nearly fifteen thousand objects, of which a little over a hundred are designated National Treasures. The campus is itself an exhibit. The 1895 main building, the Meiji Kotokan by Katayama Tokuma, is a French Renaissance red-brick pile listed with the front gate as an Important Cultural Property, with Rodin's Thinker in the forecourt; the Heisei Chishinkan, completed in 2014 to a design by Taniguchi Yoshio, is a long slender volume of steel and glass that houses the rotating Collection Gallery, arranged by sculpture, painting, calligraphy and craft. The museum does not sell one ticket that always works: its year divides into special exhibitions, Collection Gallery periods and garden-only changeover periods, each with its own price and hours. Special exhibitions suspend the Collection Gallery, and during changeovers the galleries shut altogether. The Collection Gallery costs JPY 700, stays open until 20:00 on Fridays and closes on Mondays, so a glance at the museum calendar before setting out avoids a wasted trip. It sits at Shichijo in Higashiyama, directly opposite Sanjusangendo, with Toyokuni Shrine and Hokoji to the north and the slope towards Kiyomizu-dera ten minutes south.

✨ Highlights

🛈 Practical Info