Tokyo National Museum, National museum in Ueno, Japan
Tokyo National Museum is a national museum in Ueno-kōen, Japan, that holds over 110,000 objects from Japan, China, and Korea. The main building and several side halls stand around a courtyard with gardens and walkways.
The place opened in 1872 during the Meiji period as the first national museum in Japan. The current main building was completed in 1938 to a design by Jin Watanabe in the Imperial Crown style.
The museum shows how Japanese tea ceremony objects were used by samurai and merchants through carefully arranged ceramic bowls and iron kettles. Visitors can also see scrolls that were originally displayed in homes during seasonal festivals and special occasions.
The entrance halls sit near Ueno subway station and are easy to reach on flat paths. Audio guides in several languages help visitors move through the different buildings.
The Honkan building facade mixes traditional Japanese roof shapes with western stone walls and columns. Watanabe designed this style in the 1930s as a response to the full adoption of European building forms.
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