Todaiji Museum (Todaiji Cultural Center)

Introduction

What visitors call the Todaiji Cultural Center is, for ticketing purposes, the Todaiji Museum inside it. The centre opened in October 2011 on the former site of the Todaiji school just inside Nandaimon, gathering the museum, the temple library, the Institute of Todaiji History and the Kinkinsho hall in one complex; only the museum is open to the public, while the library and research institute are not. Across twelve centuries of fires and rebuilding, Todaiji's treasures stayed scattered among its halls until this building provided seismically isolated storage and galleries for sculpture, painting, sutras and old documents. Five rooms run in chronological order: a large screen at the entrance tells of Emperor Shomu's vow to cast the Great Buddha and of the two restorations; room one holds the original hall's foundation deposits and gigaku masks; the largest room reproduces the inner sanctum of the Hokke-do at twelve metres wide and seven and a half high, housing the National Treasure Nikko and Gakko bodhisattvas; a ninth-century Senju Kannon, bugaku masks and manuscripts follow. When a hall is under repair, images normally hidden are moved here, which makes this a quite different way of seeing Todaiji sculpture from the Great Buddha Hall. Photography and sketching are banned inside. A museum-only ticket or a combined hall-and-museum ticket is available, and looking back from Nandaimon afterwards sets twelfth-century timber against a 2011 earthquake-isolated gallery.

✨ Highlights

🛈 Practical Info