The National Museum of Ethnology (国立民族学博物館, Kokuritsu Minzoku-gaku Hakubutsukan) is one of the major museums in Japan. It is Japan's largest research institute in the academic disciplines of humanities and social sciences, which was established in 1974 and opened to the public in 1977. It is built on the former grounds of Expo '70 in Suita, Osaka. The founding collection is known as the Attic Collection, and is an early 20th-century ethnological collection of mainly Japanese materials, including some early finds of Jōmon archaeological artifacts (in the Morse Collection). Further collections were brought together for the opening in 1977 and collecting activities have continued since.
The main focus of collection has been film, still images, sound recordings, and objects representing diverse aspects of everyday life, from farming to food, urban life, folk crafts, and religion. Permanent galleries for all large regions of the world display only part of the full collection.
Monday | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM |
Tuesday | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM |
Wednesday | Closed |
Thursday | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM |
Friday | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM |
Saturday | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM |
Sunday | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM |
Michael Swain | Nov 20, 2016
It felt slightly random in its choice of displays, but it was organized very well from place to place and I assume information if you can read Japanese. Don't expect much English here.
Erich Schulz | Jan 21, 2018
Not much English but still worth it
Tommy O'Neil | Jan 4, 2017
This is huge! Plan to spend more time than you would expect. Lots of very interesting exhibits and quite a bit of English on the signage
Benoit LEVASSEUR | Dec 20, 2015
Vast collection, especially strong on Japan, Korea, China. Other regions are represented by geography (roughly one zone per continent) as a nice summary of it, short but sufficient. There is also a small section on languages and - surprisingly - one entirely dedicated to music. Portable video guides are very exhaustive: they consist of over 700 videos of 1 to 3 minutes, in Japanese or English. Was not crowded in spite of it being a Sunday, most probably because access is not the easiest. Special heads up to the very specific architecture of the building from the 70's, which whether you like it or not is a must-see. Staff friendly.
Jose Cruz | Jun 27, 2017
A very pleasant mesuem!
Hans Peter | Mar 2, 2018
Amazing place to go. Located inside the World Expo area. It offers many exhibitions from all over the world. You could easily spend the whole day here and you would still find interesting things. Even if you don't like museums, this one is special. While it offers to so many cultures exponents and information it just keeps interesting.
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