We will be travelling to Japan for the first time and would like to learn some history of Japan and its people. Please share a museum or other sites that we can learn about this culture. While it would be interesting to see museums with historical artifacts, we would be much more interested in learning about the culture past and present.
Thanks,
Nick
The Edo-Tokyo Museum is scheduled to re-open on March 31, 2026.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo-Tokyo_Museum
https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/news/the-edo-tokyo-museum-will-finally-reopen-in-march-2026-120825#:~:text=The%20history%20museum's%20long%2Dawaited,Photo%3A%20Fujino%20Hiro%2FPhoto%20AC
Not sure when you are going but watch for the reopening of the Edo Tokyo Museum. Its website says March 31.
I will be returning from Japan on March 5 so we will miss the re-opening of the Edo-Tokyo Museum.
The Tokyo National Museum at Ueno Park. Art, but a lot about the culture also.
And Yasakuni Shrine. Controversial, but to learn about Japan’s wartime experience and the effect it still has (in a right wing way), very interesting.
Hiroshima Peace Park with its museum of the bombing. Then take the very short ferry ride to Miyajima Island, where there is a museum of history and folklore, also there is a Buddhist temple to visit.
There are craft centers scattered all throughout which offer visitors hands-on lessons, along with some history of the practice. While there, we did rice paper making, indigo dyeing, ceramics, and origami.
In Himeji, (close to Osaka), there is a quite large toy museum. It’s very interesting to see what is uniquely Japanese and what is universal to childhood.
Any history of Japan should include Commodore Perry's (US) sailing into the Japanese harbor and declaring Japan to be open to trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition
[snip]
The expedition was commanded by Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, under orders from President Millard Fillmore. Perry's primary goal was to force an end to Japan's 220-year-old policy of isolation and to open Japanese ports to American trade, through the use of gunboat diplomacy if necessary.
The resultant treaty:
You may have to read a couple of books and use those to give structure to what you see on your trip. For our upcoming trip I am reading "Bending Adversity, Japan and the Art of Survival" by David Pilling. It includes the more recent economic issues and the tsunami. It isn't a linear history book. He is a journalist. But it gives context to more current Japan by tracing the history on various topics.
Since you'll miss the Edo-Tokyo Museum, I'd recommend either the Shi-tamachi Museum or the Fukagawa Edo Museum. Both focus on Edo culture of the common people and have hands-on components. They also have special exhibitions focusing on aspects of Japanese culture. [Note that there isn't a hyphen in the name of the museum that starts with an S, but the filters won't allow the post to go through with that string of four letters. Thanks to our esteemed webmaster for helping me figure that out.]
The Tobacco and Salt Museum might be of interest for the quirky window that provides to Japanese culture. The Sumida Hokusai Museum has works of art in their special exhibitions and more of a cultural/historical presentation in their permanent exhibition.
All four of the above museums are in Tokyo.
If you want to learn more about the late 19th and 20th century arrival of Westerners, the Yamate area in Yokohama would be interesting.
