Our 8th usage of the Grutt Pass was going to be at the Bridgestone Museum of Art near Nihonbashi. For the second time we encountered a museum that was closed due to a rotation in exhibits. Ugh.

We flipped through our pass booklet to find the closest museum, and it turned out to be the Mitsui Memorial Museum. We had no idea what to expect as we hadn’t researched this fall-back museum at all. We got really lucky.

Nothing was available in English so we didn’t know what we would be seeing. In the second room of the exhibit I realized that we had stumbled upon some of the most famous works to ever be created in Japan. Thank you Bridgestone Museum for being closed! Otherwise we would have never seen these originals.

Photography was not allowed so the pics below were not taken by me.

First up was Hokusai’s “Great Wave off Kanagawa” (Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 神奈川沖浪裏). The original is not as pretty as the prints you normally see which have been altered, but the feeling while seeing the real thing is far better than the cleaned-up prints. The above is a photo of the original. Click on the above to see the version you are probably more familiar with.

The above was drawn from basically the same spot that I took this next picture on Enoshima.

Another ukiyoe that brought back a recent memory was this next one by Hiroshige (歌川広重) from his series “The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō.”

We were near that spot a few weeks back in Hakone at the Old Tokaido Hakone Checkpoint. Here is a photo I took then from the same general location. Unfortunately, the clouds obscured Mt. Fuji for my picture, unlike Hiroshige’s.

By the way, the museum entrance fee would have been 1,200 yen. We got in free with the Grutt Pass.

Related posts:

1. Mitsui Memorial Museum (三井記念美術館) – Part 2 Continuing from yesterday’s blog entry, the “Special Exhibition: Vision and Reminiscence of Edo – Masterpieces from the Takahashi Seiichiro Collection of Ukiyo-e Prints” was a lot of fun to stumble...
2. Hakone Open-Air Museum On part of the Hakone Loop is the Hakone Open-Air Museum, a very cool attraction that has something for everyone. In the background of this picture you can see...
3. Museum foot soak I’ve mentioned before that if you ever do the Hakone Loop you may want to do it in the reverse direction as that usually directed in the guidebooks. Counterclockwise...
4. The Hakone Open-Air Museum (箱根彫刻の森美術館) I have shown you several photos from The Hakone Open-Air Museum before, but this is the first one from the outside. I think I’ll present several images from the...
5. Flying at The Hakone Open-Air Museum As the name suggests, many of the works at The Hakone Open-Air Museum are in the “open air” (野外彫刻). This outdoor sculpture by Carl Milles entitled “Man and Pegasus”...

Posted on November 9th, 2009 under Japan • Tags: enoshima, grutt pass, hakone, museums, Tokyo. • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed