Located in the Harajuku area of Shibuya, the Ota Memorial Museum of Art is incredibly well located to reach many other attractions in Tokyo after your visit. The museum houses a collection of around 14,000 ‘ukiyo-e’ artworks, once the private collection of Seizo Ota V – a former president of Toho Insurance Company. While the name may not be instantly known to many international visitors, many fine examples of ‘ukiyo-e’ paintings and woodblock prints will be instantly recognisable.

At its height through the Edo Period (1603-1868), ukiyo-e translates as ‘images of the floating world’ which captured the hedonistic lives of the aristocracy through to scenes of daily life, to the natural world and supernatural realms.

The works that the Museum house include some of the famous artists such as Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, and Kitagawa Utamaro. Due to the fragile nature of ukiyo-e, the museum routinely organises monthly exhibitions so that works can be rotated and risk to them is reduced. Themes for these exhibitions range from celebrating seasonal landscapes, portraits of Kabuki actors and animals.

During his lifetime, Seizo dedicated himself to regaining many of the ukiyo-e artworks that were taken out of Japan during the Meiji Period and in doing so, accrued one of Japan’s great collections. Upon his death in 1977, his collection was made accessible to the public with the museum opening in 1980. Around half the prints are on view at any one time with English information varying in quality and descriptiveness between artworks.