The Nihon Minkaen 日本民家園

The will of men

In 1955, Kinya Sekiguchi, a 4th year architecture student at the University of Yokohama, conducted research on the rural architectural heritage of Kawasaki for his graduation thesis. He noticed the house of the Ito family, a minka with a thatched roof from the end of the 17th century , and made the municipal authorities aware of the essential preservation of traditional houses. In particular, he alerted Ryonin Furue, who works to protect Kawasaki's cultural property. In May 1964, the steps of the two men succeed: the Ito house is classified as an important cultural asset of Japan . In an ambitious project, Mr. Furue wishes to transfer the minka to a park-museum in Kawasaki in order to preserve them and avoid their possible dispersion throughout the archipelago. This museum located on the hills of Tama in the heart of the forest, the Nihon Minkaen, was born in 1967 . The safeguard of the Ito house having led to the creation of the museum, it is logically the first minka to be moved there. For the little anecdote, at the opening of the Nihon Minkaen in April 1967, no visitor showed up the first day to admire the three minka installed in the park. But this has fortunately changed a lot: the Nihon Minkaen now welcomes more than 100,000 tourists every year!

Minka from different regions

Just over 50 years after its inauguration , what can you see there? The city of Kawasaki has recreated a real village of about twenty historic buildings dating from the 17th to the 19th century such as minkas , merchants ' houses, a water mill, a stall on stilts, a ferryman's hut river, a kabuki scene… The houses with architectural styles characteristic of a region or an era are divided into five distinct zones.

Craft activities

The Nihon Minkaen also offers throughout the year events related to traditional culture such as festivals, craft workshops (wickerwork and bamboo, weaving, indigo dyeing), ancient games, readings of popular tales in regional dialects , performances of kabuki. These are set in an ancient rural scene from the late Edo period originally located in the Shima Peninsula. It has all the traditional mechanisms and can accommodate quality performances. For those who would like to learn more about the construction techniques, the materials used, the different uses of these ancestral buildings and the history of the museum itself, the exhibition hall awaits you. Thanks to the will of two men and the preservation policy of the municipality of Kawasaki, a whole regional rural heritage is superbly preserved and enhanced on its original lands .

To read: The art of indigo dyeing