Tokugawa Art Museum and Tokugawaen

I got the opportunity to visit a pretty neat museum this weekend. The Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya city was founded in 1935 and it is one of the oldest museums in Japan. It is most famous for it's exhibitions on the Owari Tokugawa shoguns and for housing many pages from the original "Tales of the Genji"storybook.

As mentioned, on display were weapons, household items, clothing, and other artifacts that either belonged to the Tokugawa shoguns or dated from the same period. Unfortunately, we could not take any pictures inside the gallery, but there are some key items and some more history available at the official website.

The current special exhibition was on the dolls of the Edo period. Now I was never much of a doll person, but this was really cool. Again, I couldn't take pictures of the gallery itself, but there a were a few dolls on display in the entrance that was able to I snap a quick picture of.

My favorite set by far was a something like a doll house that was about three feet long in all three dimensions, but instead of a house, it was actually a palace, and instead of Ken and Barbie, there were an emperor and an empress dolls sitting at the head of the table and there were children dolls and servant dolls, and everything was cooler because instead of anatomically disproportion mass-produced plastic toys, these were hand crafted and completely ornate. Too cool to play with in my opinion.

This is not the specific set described, but very similar!

Adjacent to the museum was Tokugawaen, a traditional Japanese garden constructed in the style popular in the Edo period. It was very picturesque and there was a little restaurant hall and plenty of walking pathways to explore.