Mito City Museum

Mito City Museum is a comprehensive municipal museum that opened in 1980 (Shōwa 55). It has four departments: natural history, history, folk culture, and art, and it shares a building with the Mito City Central Library. The history department focuses on collecting materials related to the Mito Domain and records of the Mito air raids. Its permanent exhibition introduces the Mito Tokugawa family and the history of Mito, including Tokugawa Mitsukuni, known as "Mito Kōmon."

The Mito Tokugawa family was one of the Three Great Houses (Gosanke). The 9th domain lord, Tokugawa Nariaki, is especially well known as the spiritual pillar of the Sonnō Jōi movement in the late Tokugawa period. Nariaki was a domain lord who placed importance on strengthening military preparedness, and he is also known for promoting the swordsmiths of the Mito domain (Mito blades). In Nariaki's era, the Mito domain established the domain school Kōdōkan to provide civil and martial education and martial training for retainers. In 1857 (Ansei 4), it set up a weapons workshop on Shirahatayama, west of Mito Castle, to begin producing firearms, swords, and armor.

The domain's sword forging is said to have begun when Ōmura Kaboku, active in the era of the 2nd domain lord Mitsukuni, and Yoshikado, who descended from the Seki smiths of Mino, became retainers of the domain. Afterward, the craft was carried on by master smiths such as Naoe Sukemasa, Ichige Tokuchika, and Katsumura Norikatsu.

Mito is also home to the domain school Kōdōkan, founded by Nariaki (a national Special Historic Site), and to Kairaku-en, so visitors can combine the museum with a tour of places associated with the Mito domain.