Tokyo Toy Museum

photo by Tzu-hsun Hsu · CC BY-SA 4.0

photo by koji_h · CC BY 3.0

In the old Yotsuya school (1936): 100,000 toys, and almost all of them can be touched.

In the wooden building of the former Yotsuya Dai-4 Elementary School, closed in 2007 and reopened as a museum the following year, almost all the toys can be touched and played with: mostly wooden, Japanese and European. There is a separate area for children under two, with a floor of Tama cedar that keeps warm without heating. At weekends it gets crowded, with waits for the most popular stations.

The museum opened in 1984 in Nakano as ‘Omocha Bijutsukan’, on the initiative of Tada Shinsaku; in 2008, after the closure of Yotsuya Dai-4 Elementary School (a 1936 building), it moved here and took its current name. According to the official website (2026) the collection numbers about 100,000 pieces from around a hundred countries; the Wikipedia infobox gives 150,000 instead, from a 2008 source. It promotes mokuiku (木育), wood education through play: from here fourteen more ‘toy houses’ have been set up in other prefectures of Japan.

ℹ️ Open 10:00–16:00, last entry 15:30; closed on Thursdays, with maintenance closures in February and September and over the year-end and New Year period. Adult ticket (junior high and up) 1,100 yen online, 1,300 at the ticket desk; children 800–1,000 yen, free under 6 months. The area reserved for children under 2 works in one-hour sessions, with no changes of time slot. Seven minutes on foot from Yotsuya-sanchōme Station (exit 2); no car park.

🚉 Yotsuya-sanchome · 6 min walk

Sources: art-play.or.jp · art-play.or.jp · art-play.or.jp · ja.wikipedia.org

All series · Open the map