Akita City Akarenga-kan Museum, Art museum and folk museum in central Akita, Japan.
Akita City Akarenga-kan Museum is an art and folk museum in Akita, Japan, housed in a red brick building with Renaissance design elements that combines white tiles and stone from the nearby Oga region. The collection covers traditional local crafts and works by local artists, displayed across several exhibition rooms on multiple floors.
The building was erected in 1912 as the headquarters of Akita Bank, making it one of the early examples of Western-style architecture in the region. It was converted into a museum in 1985 and soon after received recognition as a national cultural asset of Japan.
The old meeting room holds a memorial room for Sekiya Shiro, a metalsmith from Akita and a holder of the Important Intangible Cultural Property (Living National Treasure), with his home studio recreated and his works on display. The annex has a room for the Akita-born printmaker Katsuhira Tokushi, showing works on local nature and customs alongside his life and career.
The building is roughly a 15-minute walk from JR Akita Station and easy to reach without a car. Visiting in the morning or early afternoon gives enough time to move through all the exhibition floors at a comfortable pace.
The former bank's old strongroom now serves as a permanent gallery for Akita silver-wire filigree and other local crafts. In 2022 the building was named one of Akita Prefecture's 50 infrastructure works to pass on to the future.
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