About the Museum
A palace of fine arts Okada Museum of Arts
Hakone is an international and popular tourist destination
with as many as 20 hot spring clusters nestled among
the verdant mountains and pristine rivers. Kowakudani (Kowakidani)
hot springs are located midway between Yumoto Station and
Lake Ashinoko on the Japan National Highway Route No.1.
In autumn 2013, a great museum housing many exquisite Eastern treasures and collections opened.
In the Edo period, Kowakudani was called “small hell hole”,
in recognition of its smoking wastelands. The ten years between 1877 and 1887
were to see the start of the area's regeneration as a hot spring spa.
A group of far-sighted entrepreneurs created a hot spring spa and resort,
complete with both elegant Japanese-style and Western-style hotels.
The Okada Museum of Art was constructed on the site of the old Kaikatei hotel built in the Meiji period for Westerners.
Covering some 6,300㎡ and with a total floor area of about 7,700㎡,
the Museum has an impressive exhibition space of around 5,000㎡.
This spacious building mainly exhibits Japanese, Chinese,
and Korean works of art ranging from ancient times through to the present age.
Gallery Spaces in Harmony with Nature
After touring the galleries, visitors can enjoy strolling through the extensive gardens
covering some 15,000㎡ and laced with spring streams and trees.
At the front of the building, the visitor will find footbaths with free-flowing water from the hot springs.
Relaxing your feet and soaking in the footbath while enjoying a drink,
you can appreciate Fukui Kotaro's huge paneled mural “Wind/Time” (depicting a Wind God and Thunder God).
We hope you will enjoy your time experiencing the sublime beauty
and serenity of the Okada Museum of Art and its natural grounds,
and we are looking forward to helping you enjoy your visit to our Museum.
Greeting
The Okada Museum of Art is a new private art museum that opened its doors in October 2013. It shares Japanese and Eastern artworks and archaeological artifacts, as well as other cultural assets, with the public.
While its collection is centered on early modern and modern Japanese-style paintings as well as ceramics from East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan), it also includes archaeological artifacts such as Jomon clayware, earthen figures, and clay images, ancient and medieval Buddhist artwork (statues, paintings), fragments of famous figures' handwriting, and crafts such as lacquerwork, jade, and metalwork pieces. In this way, the museum's collection, which also includes famous and rare pieces, is expansive in its temporal reach as well as the fields it covers. We take pride in the fact that it is able to meet the diverse interests of our visitors.
The museum exists to offer these Japanese and Asian artworks in an excellent environment for viewing, as well as take care of them so that they can be passed down to the next generation. We will see to it that it functions as a place where people can experience and enjoy Japan and other Asian countries' outstanding art history.
The museum's beautiful five-story building, which was designed by Miura Shin to make use scenic Kowakudani's inclined land, has caught the attention of art aficionados for its massive wind and thunder gods entrance mural: the 12 m x 30 m “Wind/Time” by Japanese-style painter Fukui Kotaro. The area around the museum is a restful oasis, featuring a water lily pond, a free-flowing spring footbath, a garden with seasonal flowers, and Kaikatei, a refined restaurant in a renovated Japanese-style house.
It is my hope that Japanese people living hurried lives as well as foreign visitors will be able to enjoy the sights of the international tourist attraction that is Hakone, immerse themselves in our artworks with a relaxed heart and mind, reflect again upon the beautiful assets left for us by our ancestors, and come away with vitality restored in their daily lives.
We look forward to your visit.
