Watanabe Art Museum, Art museum in Tottori, Japan

The Watanabe Art Museum is an art museum in Tottori that houses around 30,000 works, including Buddhist sculptures, ceramics from China, Korea, and Japan, plus numerous folding screens. The collection also features a substantial selection of samurai armor and traditional weapons from different periods.

Doctor Hajime Watanabe (1911–2017), a Tottori physician, gathered a collection of more than 30,000 artworks. The museum opened in 1978 to house and display this collection, became a foundation in 1987, and was reclassified as a public interest incorporated foundation in 2012.

The museum displays artifacts that tell the long story of Japan, including samurai armor and objects from the Ikeda clan that once ruled Tottori. These items help visitors understand how the warriors and noble families of the region lived and what role they played.

The museum is at 55 Keiji, Tottori. From Tottori Station on the JR San'in Line, take a Nikko or Hinomaru bus toward the sand dunes (routes 32, 32H, 33, 35, 38, 38H or 39) for about 15 minutes and get off at "Watanabe Bijutsukan-mae"; the loop Kirin Lion bus (route 09) also stops there. Opening hours are 10:00–17:00 on weekends and holidays and 10:00–15:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, with last entry 30 minutes before closing. It is closed on Tuesdays (or the following day when Tuesday is a holiday) and from 30 December to 2 January. Free parking for 50 cars.

The museum holds over 200 suits of samurai armour, the largest and most diverse such collection in Japan, with more than half of its 30,000 pieces on display. The armour spans the Warring States period and the Edo period, and the collection also includes items tied to the Ikeda clan, the daimyo family that ruled Tottori during the Edo period.