Takehara City Museum of History & Folklore

Takehara City Museum of History & Folklore

The Takehara City Museum of History & Folklore is located in a two-storey, pale blue, western-style building in the middle of the historical district.

The building was built in 1929 and was the Takehara Shoin Library. It became a museum in 1980. Takehara Shoin was a Confucian academy on this site in the latter half of the Edo period.

Local history and folklore museums in Japan are a mixed bag. Some are excellent and free, some are expensive and quite boring, and many fall in between the two extremes...... this one is average.

It's free, so that can't be bad, although I now read that the second floor exhibition now includes a 200 yen charge.

This is because since I visited NHK has aired a wildly popular drama, Massan, about the "father" of Japanese Whiskey, Masataka Taketsuru, and his Scottish wife. He was born here in Takehara and it is said he used the library. There is now a statue of the couple in front of the museum and I suspect the second floor is devoted to him.