Yatsushiro Municipal Museum

Yatsushiro Municipal Museum

The Yatsushiro Municipal Museum in Yatsushiro, Kyushu was one of the earliest projects of Kumamoto Artpolis, a prefecture-wide program of innovative architecture. It was built in 1991 and designed by Toyo Ito.

It appears very light with its sweeping canopies, and to my mind is reminiscent of one of his most famous earlier projects, Steel Hut.

It appears to be a single storey building, but the artificial hill it stands on contains a lower floor.

The large cylindrical form on top is actually a storage space. Traditionally museums have storage in the basement, but the water table here is quite high.

I've been here twice but on both occasions it was closed so I cannot report on the museums content.

Izumo Folkcrafts Museum (exterior)

 

For years I had driven past signs pointing to the Izumo Mingeikan, but it wasnt't until recently that I visited it, and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised.

It is housed on the property of the Yamamoto family, one of the wealthiest familes in the Izumo region in historical times.

The main house is still a residence and neither it nor the garden can be visited.

The museum is housed in twolarge warehouses-storehouses, one dedicated to historical pieces and the other to contemporary pieces. They also have a small shop with a good selection of books, crafts, etc.

Photos and info on the works on display will come later........

Former Kyusendo Forest Museum

 

Overhanging the cliffs of the Kumagawa River, and on the opposite side of the road to the Kyusendo cave, this unusual structure used to house the Kyusendo Forest Museum.

Built in 1985, domes are rarely found in Japan, and it looks almost Middle-Eastern. It was still open when I was in the area, but I did not venture inside.

Like so many monumental buildings in rural Japan I suspect it never even came close to making any money and its upkeep would have been substantial.

Still,  the architect, construction companies, and most importantly, the concrete companies will have made a handsome profit.

Yunomae Manga Museum

 

After leaving my berth for the night I began the 41st day of my walk around Kyushu by taking the train a couple of stops east to the terminal at Yunomae, a small hot spring resort in the mountains of Kumamoto. The next pilgrimage temple was actually west but I was making a small detour to see some things that interested me.

First stop was the Yunomae Manga Museum, kind of a memorial to a local man, Ryosuke Nasu, who was a political cartoonist and caricaturist from the 1930's and 40's. As well as exhibiting his work they also hold numerous manga events and festivals.

It was too early for me to enter, but I was more interested in the architecture. It was one of dozens and dozens of pieces of architecture around Kumamoto that are part of what is called Kumamoto Artpolis, an attempt to integrate architecture and design in a better way throughout the prefecture.

There are a lot of heavyweight architects who have contributed, but, like here, lesser-known architects. Many of the pieces are in quite remote locations but as I have an interest in modern architecture I will be making a bunch of small detours as I pass through Kumamoto to visit as many of them as I can.

Chiran Peace Museum

Hundreds of stone lanterns line the main road that leads towards the Chiran Peace Museum in Chiran, southern Kagoshima. Chiran was an airbase operating during WWII that was home to one of the "Special Attack Squadrons", known as kamikaze in English.

All the displays are to do with the kamikaze operations and it is heavily focussed on the pilots themselves. It is very much a place to memorialize them and revere them.

The grounds of the museum also includes a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple, both of which revere the dead pilots. Photography was not allowed inside the museum.

I was quite uncomfortable during my visit as there was a heavily nationalistic element to the place, and in my humble opinion nationalism is not connected with peace. Individuals sacrificing their lives for the state is an increasingly popular ideology, especially for the sociopaths who comprise the state.

There seems to be no mention of the indoctrination that caused the sacrifice of the pilots in an unwinnable war, nor that such tactics likely influenced the decision to drop the nuclear bombs.

Many of the "peace" museums in Japan focus almost exclusively on Japanese victims. A few that didn't have in recent years had their funding removed.

Satsuma Denshokan Museum

Satsuma Denshokan Museum

Ther Satsuma Denshokan is a private art museum located on the outskirts of Ibusuki in southern Kagoshima. The museum's primary focus is on ceramics produced in Satsuma, the former name of Kagoshima.

The architecture is based on Buddhist temples from the Heian Period, and with the large pool of water makes for some dramatic photography at the right time and under the right conditions.

The museum is a little pricey, but is well laid out, spacious, and with good displays with a fair amount of English.

Satsuma-ware was mostly made for export to the West and like the pottery traditions of many areas in West japan was based on Korean potters "brought" from Korea after Hideyoshi's failed war there.

The museum does have othere examples of arts from historic Satsuma too.....

Shiryokan Izushi History Museum

Izushi

The Shiryokan History Museum in Izushi housed in a traditional residence.

Izushi is a small castle town in northern Hyogo, now a part of Toyooka City. The old town contains about 50 acres of Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, and here is located the Shiryokan, the local history museum.

Genkan entrance hall of a wealthy merchants house from the Edo Period

It's in an Edo Period residence of a wealthy merchant family, a cluster of connected buildings with lots of art and artifacts on display, but for me, it was the architecture itself, especially the interiors, that were the star of the show.

small irori in the floor with tokonoma behind

Spread over 2 floors, there is a veritable warren of rooms to explore filled with tatami, shoji, tokonoma, irori, fusuama, and all the traditional features of Japanese interiors. Somewhat unusual was the reddish hue of many of the walls, which comes from local clay.

Chigai-dana, traditional shoin-style shelving

A large storehouse also has displays of samurai weapons and armor.

sunlight through summer lattice windows cast strong shadows on tatami

Izushi History Museum

78 Izushicho Yoida, Toyooka-shi, Hyogo 668-0232

Tel: 0796-52-6556

Open 9:30am to 5pm every day except Tuesdays and over the new year

Entry 300yen for adults, 180 yen for kids

Masks of Ishigaki Island

Masks of Ishigaki

Ishigaki is a small island that is part of what is now Okinawa, though it is much closer to Taiwan than to the main island of Okinawa.

The Ishigaki Shiritsu Yaeyama Museum is a local history museum that had some masks among the displays, and masks are objects I seek out when traveling around Japan.

I know little about Okinawan masks, but it looks like these three are some form of ogre.

I believe the second photo show Angama masks which are worn during Obon. The bottom photo is a Shishi.

Ishigaki Sea Salt

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Tengu Masks in the Kirishima Mask Museum

Kirishima Mask Museum

The mask museum in Kirishima was called "Tengu-kan", and obviously there were a lot of masks of tengu on display. Most of which were the red-faced long nose variety.

Probably the earlier version of Tengu was more birdlike in appearance, like the one in the top center of the photo below. The long nosed version is probably derived from Sarutahiko, the earthy kami who helped lead Ninigi and his entourage from the High Plain of Heaven. he later married Uzume and a mask of Sarutahiko and Uzume are often found together at shrines, often linked to fertility.

Tengu are often connected to Yamabushi, the mysterious mountain monks who practised austerities and magic in the remote sacred mountains. A distinguishing feature is the tokin, the small black headgear worn on the top of the forehead. It is said this was to protect the head while walking through the forest. It was also used as a drinking vessel.

The museum is located near the entrance to Kirishima Jingu Shrine up in the mountains of northern Kagoshima and if you are visiting the area and like masks then is a must see.

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Kirishima Mask Museum

Being a mask maker myself, I have a great interest in masks and am always on the lookout for them on my walks. Ive visited a few small mask museums, ut the absolute best was in Kirishima.

Located close to the entrance to Kirishima Jingu Shrine up in the mountains of Kagoshima, it called itself Kirishima Tengu-kan, and there were plenty of tengu masks on display, but there were also hundreds and hundreds of other masks from all over Japan.

There were Noh masks, Kagura masks, new masks, old masks, and I even found some examples of my local Iwami Kagura masks. Apparently, it was the private collection of a local man.

Most of the masks were Japanese, but there were also collections from Africa and Asia. A delightful surprise and not a well known place, well worth stopping by if you are in the area.

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Ikuchijima Island-Wide Art Museum

On the second day of my walk from Honshu to Shikoku along the Shimanami Kaido I left Kosanji Temple and started walking down the west coast of the island. On the beach looking westward was this statue, a Jizo I think.

A little further, set on a rock in the water was an unusual modern sculpture, "Wings of the Waves" by Susumu Shingu, one of 17 modern sculptures located around the island in what they call the Island-Wide Art Museum

Sunset Beach runs down the coast almost to the Tatara Bridge which crosses over to Omishima.

At the southern end of the beach another couple of sculptures. In the foreground is "Calm Time-Red form / Inclination by Keiji Uematsu, and in the background "Clairvoyance" by Shin Matsunaga.

Art can take many forms, but this old bus is not part of the Island-Wide Art Museum.

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