Yatsushiro City Museum Miraino-Mori Museum

Yatsushiro City Museum (Miraino-Mori Museum) is the comprehensive municipal museum of Yatsushiro, a historically significant castle town in southern Kumamoto Prefecture. Yatsushiro was a key strategic position in Kyushu, governed successively by the Katō and Hosokawa clans, whose accumulated cultural heritage is the museum's core strength.

The sword and armor collection centers on pieces inherited from the Matsui clan, hereditary senior retainers (karō) who governed Yatsushiro Castle on behalf of the Hosokawa domain. The Matsui family was closely associated with Hosokawa Tadaoki (Sansai) — renowned warrior, tea master, and husband of the martyred Christian Gracia Hosokawa. Their collection therefore weaves together swords, tea utensils, correspondence, and paintings in a way that illuminates the dual warrior-aesthete identity of senior Sengoku and early Edo retainers.

Notable among the holdings are items connected to Takayama Ukon, the prominent Christian daimyo, and pieces associated with the tea-culture lineages of Furuta Oribe and Kobori Enshū. The combination of sword collecting and tea culture patronage makes this collection a rare window into the aesthetic world of the Edo-period ruling class.

The museum is easily accessible from the Kyushu Expressway (Yatsushiro IC) and serves as a cultural hub for the southern Kyushu route combining Minamata and Amakusa.