Japan poses something of a problem when it comes to ‘Best’ and ‘Worst’. Namely that the delta on museum quality was surprisingly small. It didn’t matter if it was a national science museum, or a local sewage centre; basically every museum was up to a very high standard that used modern practice. And that’s across the 92 different places I managed to visit across my two week stay in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka!
As such, unlike with the previous versions of this series there wasn’t anything that stuck out as particularly terrible, nor actually as particularly amazing. This in itself is something of note and something I hope to consider further but the format demands some bests and worsts so I’m going to cheat and use it more to expound on some broader ideas than give a definitive answer.
The ‘Best’ - Toy Film Museum/Gas Science Museum
I have said before that one of the best museums I ever visited was one room in Estonia where a man told me about some coins. Nothing fancy or flashy, just an excellent guide with a great story to tell. The Toy Film Museum fits into this very mold.
The tucked away museum very much seemed to be a few rooms in the owner’s house. Upon entering I managed to surprise the poor lady, though she quickly recovered and ended up giving me an excellent tour of their collection of magic lanterns and happily chatted away for close to an hour about various things that they have been involved with and showing off an assortment of films.
Photo of part of the Magic Lantern Collection
The joy of a museum like the Toy Film museum is of course not truly in the structure of the museum itself. In many ways it is a collection of unlabeled artifacts and without a guide it would be almost meaningless. Instead it comes from the clear love and passion of the collections owner, the stories they can tell about each and every object and the things they are excited to show you.
Such an idea of course cannot be expanded to national museums or really anything beyond the very small because you could never reliably hire in a person with the same level of love. Which is why it’s always such a joy to find such a place. I’m now even featured on their blog so could hardly go without doing the same.
I will expound further in another blog about the existence of high quality ‘municipal’ museums but one that really stood out was the Tokyo Gas Science Museum. This was a place that despite my natural concerns about fossil fuels managed to genuinely get me (at least temporarily) excited about burning natural gas…
A gas lit lantern in the Gas Science Museum
No small part of this was likely caused by the fact that one of the exhibits gave me a small flame thrower which I could use to blast bubbles filled with flammable gas and other such fun activities that play on the primal urge of ‘Fire Good’. But it would be remiss of me to say that they did not also present a solid museum backing to the exhibits with a surprisingly balanced viewpoint.
Indeed there was a large exhibit dedicated to transitioning away from gas where possible, though how much of this is greenwashing is not something I could say without further exploration.
As alluded to at the start of this article there wasn’t anything particularly outstanding about this museum. It didn’t really do anything new or special, but I came away with genuinely new interest and knowledge on the topic which, having visited as many museums as I now have, is fairly infrequent.
The ‘Worst’ - Kyoto International Manga Museum/Art Aquarium Museum Ginza
Both of the ‘worst’ here are not bad. Not by any stretch. They are both well attended and put together so why are they here? The problem I think comes from the definition. Both of these places are not “museums” and thus do not meet the expectations that come from having that explicitly in their name. This is a slightly tricky prospect given there is a clear language and cultural barrier, but honestly otherwise I had basically no complaints so this is the best i’ve got.
The Kyoto International Manga Museum is not a museum. It’s a very fancy library with some exhibits, perhaps you could even call it an archive. This became clear almost immediately from both the ticket that allowed reentry (very rare in Japan) and the copious amounts of seating covered in people reading books.
The majority of the space in the old school building is covered in shelves and shelves of manga. All of which you are free to pick up and read at your leisure.
Some of the Archival Shelves in the Manga Museum
The space was busy, lots of people relaxing and reading. As mentioned there were also a few exhibits in a traditional sense. One with handcasts of manga artists, another on a particular series etc. But the space was first and foremost a library and was clearly used as such.
Again, this is by no means bad, it was very popular and perhaps if I was having a more leisurely time I could have used it as such. But this is the danger in using the name of a museum and the expectation that can set up.
Similarly on this theme Art Aquarium Museum which is in no way a museum. It’s an art gallery, and indeed it’s actually more of an Art ‘Experience’ which are increasingly common places similar to Dark Matter, teamLab, or any of dozens of similar attractions in major cities around the world. They’re put together by genuine artists yes, but foremost to be attractions that bring people in for experiences and instagram photos.
Once again this is by no means an invalid form of expression and is clearly a cut above the scourge of “selfie museums” that I've railed against before. But once again the use of the word museum sets up expectations here which go completely unmet.
One of the pieces in the Art Aquarium
The secondary issue here which should be raised is Japanese standards of animal welfare. This is once again a cultural difference so I need to be mindful of this but across the zoos, aquariums, reptile houses etc that I visited it was clear that animals are generally very poorly kept.
Across the board animals were kept in very small containers and showed clear stress behaviours. This was also especially true in the art aquarium. I will admit to not knowing much about fish and fish behaviour but it seemed clear that the fish were generally kept in very cramped and crowded conditions that were often pretty dirty.
The reason for this is fairly clear, in a zoo for example you could easily see whatever animal was in a pen and generally in motion. But you could see it because it was such a small area with nowhere to hide and the circling motion is generally a bad sign of stress.
I’m far from an animal campaigner and I generally give zoo’s etc a pass despite the potentially thorny ethical issues but I can’t deny that all of this left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.
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