Shimada Art Museum (島田美術館) 島田美術館
Among the Musashi pieces, a copy of the ‘Book of Wind’ dated 1651.
The museum opened on 20 November 1977, at the wish of the antiques collector Shimada Masatomi, who died that year at 92 and had spent a lifetime gathering evidence of the samurai culture of Kumamoto; it stands on the grounds of his house. A new wing opened in 1982; in 2005 the museum closed for the building of a municipal road and reopened in October 2007; since 2013 it has been a public-interest foundation. Musashi (1584–1645) arrived in Kumamoto in 1640, at 57, with the status of a guest at 300 koku of rice and a house in the ruins of Chiba Castle, in the service of Hosokawa Tadatoshi; he died there in 1645, after five years in which he wrote, among other things, the ‘Book of Five Rings’. Among the pieces the website lists: the ‘Book of Wind’ (風の巻), a manuscript copy from the year Keian 4 (1651), that is six years after Musashi's death; a portrait of Musashi from the early Edo period, an Important Cultural Property of the prefecture (熊本県指定重要文化財); the ‘Notes’ (覚書) of 1643; the ‘Dokkōdō’ (獨行道, ‘the path to walk alone’), as a copy; and the wooden training sword.
Kumamoto
Kami-Kumamoto
