Adachi Museum of Art

Interesting facts

The founder, Adachi Zenko, was a local self-made businessman who opened the museum in 1970 at the age of 71.

The collection holds about 120 works by Yokoyama Taikan, one of the most important groups of his paintings in Japan.

In 1979 Adachi bought the collection of Kitazawa Kunio, founder of Toyo Valve, gaining Taikan's masterpieces Autumn Leaves and Clearing After Rain.

The gardens were designed by the landscape architect Nakane Kinsaku, with the moss garden created with Kojima Saichi.

Using the technique of shakkei, or borrowed scenery, the gardens take in the wooded slopes of Mount Katsuyama, about 252 metres high, as their backdrop.

Around 2,000 trees of some 53 species, including red and black pines and maples, are planted in the grounds.

The Journal of Japanese Gardening first ranked about 1,000 Japanese gardens in 2003 and has placed Adachi at the top in every edition since.

Besides Michelin, the French Guide Bleu Japon also gives the garden its top rating of three stars.

Since 1995 the museum has awarded the Adachi Museum of Art Prize at the Inten exhibition and buys the winning painting for its collection.

Alongside Nihonga, the museum keeps children's book illustrations and wood sculptures by Hirakushi Denchu.

Why it is worth it

The Adachi Museum of Art in Yasugi is two museums in one: a collection of modern Japanese painting and one of the most admired gardens in the country, and the building is designed so that the second constantly interrupts the first. It was founded in 1970 by the collector Adachi Zenko, and the idea of looking at a garden as one looks at a painting runs through the whole place. Its grounds cover around 165,000 square metres, laid out as several distinct gardens that visitors view from inside the galleries and corridors rather than walk through.

Each garden has its own character. The Dry Landscape Garden sets three upright stones, read as mountains, in raked white sand; the Moss Garden is a sweep of cedar moss in soft curves under red pines planted at a slant, as if growing wild on a slope; the White Gravel and Pine Garden takes its composition from a painting by Yokoyama Taikan, with pines arranged over undulating white sand. A Pond Garden with a teahouse and koi completes the sequence, while on the wooded hill beyond falls the Kikaku waterfall, about fifteen metres high, made in homage to Taikan's painting of the Nachi falls. Gardeners tend the grounds every day, and the precision shows everywhere.

The most quoted effects are the framed views. Large picture windows turn the garden into a living painting, and an opening cut into a wall makes a "living hanging scroll" that changes with every season. Inside, the collection numbers around 1,500 works, with a celebrated group of paintings by Yokoyama Taikan, works by Takeuchi Seiho and other masters of modern Nihonga, and, in a hall opened in 2020, ceramics by Kitaoji Rosanjin. The garden has been ranked first in Japan for more than twenty consecutive years by the Journal of Japanese Gardening, and the museum holds three stars in the Michelin Green Guide Japan.

Getting there

The museum is in the Furukawa district of Yasugi in Shimane Prefecture, about 6 km from the centre of Yasugi. The nearest airport is Yonago Kitaro Airport (YGJ), about 13 km away. A free shuttle bus runs to the museum from JR Yasugi Station.

Adachi Museum of Art

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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