Japan Museum of Contemporary Toy, Toy museum in Yunogō Onsen, Japan

The Japan Museum of Contemporary Toy and Hall of Music Box occupies a building in Yunogō Onsen, Mimasaka. Its toy room shows 500 items selected from a collection of about 5,000, mainly European wooden toys. A separate music-box room displays around 30 antique music boxes, street organs and automata.

The museum opened in September 1995 in the former Higashiawakura village of Aida district, now part of Mimasaka, and moved to Yunogō in March 2010 to mark five years since the city merger. It has run annual exhibitions since 1996, when the C-TOY open call for creative toys began and designer Kurt Naef visited.

The museum has run daily hands-on activities since opening: toy presentations, music-box concerts and craft workshops. It also hosts the C-TOY open competition for creative toys, held in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2009, and received visits from Swiss toy maker Kurt Naef in those first three years.

The museum is open from 9:30 to 17:00, with last entry at 16:30. It closes on Wednesdays unless that day is a public holiday, in which case the next business day is closed; it stays open during spring, summer and winter school holidays. From JR Hayashino Station on the Kishin Line, an Uno bus takes about 10 minutes.

The music-box room holds about 30 instruments, among them antique music boxes, street organs and automata, separate from the roughly 500 toys on show from a collection of some 5,000. The museum has run daily music-box concerts and craft workshops since it opened, and it moved to Yunogō in March 2010.