The Japan Gallery Building
Ministry of Education architects (Bunbu Kasai and others) · Completed 1931
The older of the museum's two buildings is a work of art in its own right, and it is worth stepping back on the path from the park to look at it properly. Completed in 1931 to replace a museum destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, it is a symmetrical stone faced hall in a European neo-Renaissance style, with a central dome and two long wings. The plan is famous: seen from above the building has the shape of an aeroplane, with the dome as the cockpit and the wings stretched to either side, a deliberate tribute to the new age of flight.
Inside, the central hall rises through three storeys under a dome of stained glass, with a grand marble staircase and galleries opening off each landing. Look up at the coloured glass in the ceiling and at the ornamental plasterwork, and look down at the Foucault pendulum swinging in the stairwell. The long galleries have high ceilings and tall windows, and the original wooden cases have been kept in several rooms, so that the building itself feels like part of the collection. Details such as the brass fittings and the terrazzo floors reward a slow walk.
The building was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan in 2008, one of the few museum buildings in the country with that status, and it was carefully restored before the current displays were installed in 2007. Its name changed with the museum: it was the Tokyo Science Museum when it opened, and the Japan Gallery since the larger Global Gallery was built behind it. Compare the two on your way between them: heavy stone and dome on one side, glass and steel on the other.
Did You Know? Seen from the air the 1931 building is shaped like an aeroplane, with the dome as the cockpit, a tribute to aviation in the year it opened.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.