Kamakura Bunkakan Tsurugaoka Museum

photo by Wiiii · CC BY-SA 3.0

Sakakura's 1951 building was Japan's first public museum of modern art.

A white box on slender pilotis, set on the edge of the Heike Pond inside the grounds of Tsurugaoka Hachimangū: you arrive at the shrine and find in front of you a 1951 building that has nothing to do with what surrounds it, and that is exactly why you look at it. What it holds today is the history of the shrine and of the city.

Designed by Junzō Sakakura, a pupil of Le Corbusier, and opened in 1951 as the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Art: it was Japan's first public museum of modern art. It closed to the public in January 2016 and the collections moved to the Hayama site; the building went back to the shrine, which reopened it in 2019 after seismic retrofitting, with new displays.

ℹ️ Open 10:00–16:30, last entry 16:00, closed on Mondays. It stands inside the grounds of Tsurugaoka Hachimangū and has its own ticket, separate from the shrine, where entry is free.

🚉 Kamakura · 12 min walk

Sources: tsurugaokamuseum.jp · kamakuraguide.com · johnbarrarchitect.com

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