Watanabe Museum of Art

The Watanabe Museum of Art is a private museum located in Kakuji, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture. It houses approximately 30,000 items of old art collected by Hajime Watanabe, a physician in Tottori City. The collection spans a wide range of fields, including calligraphy and paintings, crafts, Buddhist art, and folk crafts. Among them, the armor and swords collection, centered on armor and swords, includes materials dating back to the Kamakura period and is the museum's representative collection.

Armor and Sword Collection

The museum holds several hundred pieces each of armor and swords. For conservation purposes, the displays are changed periodically, and in the permanent exhibition about 100 suits of armor and around 20 swords are on view. The swords include works by smiths from the local area of Inaba and Hōki (present-day Tottori Prefecture), as well as works by smiths from Bizen, Yamashiro, Sōshū, and Mino, which are part of the Gokaden (Five Traditions) of Japanese swordsmithing, excluding Yamato. A distinctive feature is that visitors can survey multiple traditions in a single museum.

Items Other Than Arms and Armor

Daimyo palanquins, battle standards (umajirushi), horse tack, matchlock guns, and cannon are also on display, presenting a multifaceted view of Edo-period daimyo processions and battlefield equipment.

Highlights

The sheer quantity of armor displayed, which the museum describes as a "legion of armor that overwhelms the viewer," is outstanding. The development of arms and armor from the Kamakura to the Edo period can be traced through a considerable number of pieces.

Cultural Significance

It is a personal collection assembled over more than sixty years by Hajime Watanabe, a physician, and the museum describes its arms and armor collection, including armor and swords, as "one of the finest in Japan."