Itsuō Art Museum, Art museum in Sakae-Honmachi, Japan

The Itsuō Art Museum is a dark-brown brick building with a flat roofline sloping to the right, a wide glass window on the lower left and a recessed glass entrance beside it. It opened on its present site in 2009, next to the Hankyū Gakuen Ikeda Bunko library. Its collection of over 5,500 works, built by Hankyū Railway founder Kobayashi Ichizō, includes 15 Important Cultural Properties and 20 Important Art Objects, with a noted group of paintings by Yosa Buson, Wu Chun and the Maruyama-Shijō school.

Kobayashi Ichizō, founder of Hankyū Electric Railway, collected art under the pen name Itsuō; the museum opened in 1957 in his former residence, the Gashozan-sō villa built in 1937. In 2009 the museum moved to a purpose-built site next to the Hankyū Gakuen Ikeda Bunko, and the old villa reopened in 2010 as the Kobayashi Ichizō Memorial Hall. The collection grew from his tea utensils, over 5,500 pieces, including 15 Important Cultural Properties and 20 Important Art Objects.

Kobayashi Ichizō, founder of Hankyu Railway, took the tea name Itsuō and assembled over 5,500 tea utensils as a tea master. The collection is known for works by Yosa Buson, Wu Chun and the Maruyama-Shijō school, which he bought piece by piece after seeing each himself, even abroad. Fifteen items are Important Cultural Properties and twenty are Important Art Objects.

The museum is a ten-minute walk from Ikeda Station on the Hankyū Takarazuka Line, or seven minutes on foot from the Ayaha bus stop. The 2009 building stands next to the Hankyū Gakuen Ikeda Bunko library. Note that the museum does not accept PiTaPa transit IC cards for payment.

The tea house in the new building is called Sokushin-An, a reconstruction of the Sokuan tea room of the Kobayashi residence, which was registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property in 2009 along with the old main house, its gate and wall, and the tea room Hiki. The museum's collection began with more than 5,500 tea utensils assembled by Kobayashi Ichizō, known as Itsuō.