The principles of this Art Museum
This Art Museum uses its natural premises and cultural properties to inform foreign visitors andto exhibit, research, and preserve familiar folk customs and practices that are being lost.
Venerating folk culture and nature, this Art Museum seeks to pass on the essential richness ofhuman experience and human relations to future generations.
Memorial hall, FounderFirst president

The Memorial Hall is a village headman’s home built over 150 years ago (as of 2014). Thebuilding is named after Yasutaka Tanabe (age 92 when he passed away), the 20 th head of theTanabe family.

Starting in his younger days, Tanabe held a number of important posts and he

was closely involved in developing the area.
curtain for the Kohoku Public Hall.

As part of his duties, he helped arrange for the drop

Tanabe asked national living treasure Keisuke Serizawa tocome up with a design, and Tanabe received 4 sketches.
was a member of the Japan Folk Arts Association.

Also enamored of folk culture, Tanabe

Tanabe endeavored to collect and preserve a

number of folk cultural properties he brought back from overseas (East and Southeast Asia inparticular), when traveling was still quite rare.

Those properties have been kept in goodcondition to this very day.
The sketch for the drop curtain for the Kohoku Public Hall (Hills Burgeoning in the Sun)
The Tanabe family home, the basis for this Art Museum and Foundation, was known as The Long
Entrance Path.

Its history stretches back to the Edo Period.

When establishing the Edo

Shogunate after winning the Battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu made the first generation ofthe Tanabe clan the First assistant storekeeper in the Bureau of Palace Kitchens.

The Shogun

allotted the head of the Tanabe family 30 koku [an ancient unit of rice] for 5 people and the rightto a surname and to wear a sword.

The head of the Tanabe clan was entrusted with managing

the lands where the family settled (now Kohoku Ward, City of Yokohama).

Later, the Tanabeclan erected the Shinpuku Temple on Komagabashi Peak (now the Shinpuku Temple on ShimodaPeak) to serve as a family temple and the Kumano Shrine (now Shimoda Shrine) to serve as atutelary shrine.

The surrounding area developed rapidly.

The Foundation was established inorder to permanently preserve the grounds, which are home to a number of remaining trees andnative plants.
The Art Museum’s “garden” is the overall term for the area from the path around the Yasutaka
Tanabe Memorial Hall to the pond on the museum’s east side and the path through the bamboo
grove on the museum’s east side.

Even at a slow pace, the path takes 10 to 20 minutes to walk.

Sights there include seasonal flowers and outdoor sculptures by Mitsuaki Tanabe.
Grounds: Native plants (long found in the area)
・Tawny daylilies, golden-rayed lilies, Korean lady’s slippers,etc.
Sights Enormous native Chinese evergreen oaks, camellias, and sweet osmanthus

Outdoor sculptures by Mitsuaki Tanabe
・A pond drawing from a natural spring・Seasonal flowers and trees
・Numerous garden stones from 10 tons of rock
Air raid shelters that were actually used during WWII (tours inside the shelters only take place oncertain days)
・A storehouse built over 300 years ago

etc.

The view from the pathway
Yoshino cherries and Japanese mountain cherries bloom at different times
This Art Museum permanently exhibits works by the sculptor Mitsuaki Tanabe as well ascollected works that had a major influence on those sculptures.

For 30 years, Tanabe produced

modern sculptures to emulate a wild rice habitat conservation project (the wild strain not foundin Japan) on the theme of “agriculture.”

Those works are on display in rice-producing regionsof Asia, international agricultural research institutes, national research institutes, art museums,and museums in different countries, and in UN organizations.
A collection of votive objects and farming implements from the Rice Terraces of the Philippine
Cordilleras, the first rice-producing area to be included on the World Heritage List
The northern mountains of the island of Luzon are home to the Ifugao, Bontoc, Kalinga, andKankanaey peoples.

Rice terraces in those mountains are said to “stretch to heaven.”

Thefootpaths between rice fields have a total length that would stretch halfway around the world.
Rice cultivation rituals have been passed down in the area for thousands of years.

Considered

to be the oldest form of those rituals, the practices are handed down even today.

The TanabeCollection has recently been featured in the City of Shizuoka Toro Museum and at an exhibitionby the Akita Prefectural Museum.