Kusakabe Folk Museum in Takayama 日下部民藝館

When you enter the Kusakabe Folk Art Museum , time seems to stand still. It's a bit the same feeling as the one that runs through us when we first discover the city that houses this house: Takayama .

Located in the north of the prefecture of Gifu, Takayama is an old feudal city , where the wooden houses , all perfectly aligned and almost similar, bring to the streets a cachet of yesteryear that plunges us directly into the atmosphere that could reign there during the Edo period (1603-1868). Because it was at this time that the merchant city began to prosper.

Our houses for rent in Takayama

A MERCHANTS' HOME

The Kusakabe Folk Art Museum is a perfect marker of this era. The residence belonged to a wealthy family of suppliers , who, among other things, supplied the Tokugawa shogunate. If the house was ravaged by fire in 1875, it was rebuilt identically to 1879.

See: Visit Tokyo in the footsteps of the Tokugawa

This machiya , a typical merchants' house, was built in 1879. Built by Jisuke Kawashiri, a famous woodworker of the time, it is two stories tall, with gabled walls, stepped roofs and a double-height hall. The whole, supported by sturdy beams and posts, and surmounted by the slightly sloping roofs and wide, low eaves, typical of the architecture of the mountainous and snowy areas of Japan .

LISTED BUILDINGS

The buildings were listed as Important Cultural Property by the government in 1966 . The Kusakabe residence was thus the first private house of Meiji architecture to receive this distinction.

When you enter this house transformed into a museum , your gaze is immediately caught by the huge 13-meter-long Japanese red pine beam that supports the ceiling. The visit then continues in different rooms such as the kitchen or the Buddhist altar. You can also admire, on the 2nd floor, the kago , in which the bride of the 9th generation of the Kusakabe family was transported, as well as her navy blue wedding dress, a very original color for a wedding of the time and conservative Japan.

A COLLECTION OF CERAMICS

In addition, the folk art museum also contains a collection of braziers, as well as 5,000 Hida ceramics , on permanent display.

To read: Raku ceramics

A visit to this museum therefore allows you to better understand both the architecture of the merchants' houses but also what the life of these merchants might have looked like in the city of Takayama.

Discover Takayama with our activity