Kyushu National Museum Audio Guide

Kyushu National Museum: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Kyushu National Museum

   Welcome to the Kyushu National Museum, known in Japanese as Kyushu Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan. It sits on a forested hill in Dazaifu, a small city just outside Fukuoka, right beside the grounds of Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine. Look up from the valley and you will see a huge, gleaming blue building rising above the trees. It looks a little like a sports stadium, and it is a striking sight in such a quiet town. This museum opened on October sixteenth, 2005, and it made national news. It became Japan's fourth national museum, joining the ones in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara, which had all been built in the late nineteenth century. That makes it the first new national museum in Japan in more than a hundred years. Over the next few stops, we will look at why Dazaifu was chosen, how the building was designed to echo the mountains around it, and what the galleries inside say about Japan's long conversation with the rest of Asia.

2. 02

   Why Dazaifu? The Kyushu National Museum and an Ancient Capital of Diplomacy

   To understand this museum, start with its address. During the Nara and Heian periods, roughly from the year 710 to 1185, Dazaifu was the site of a government office that handled diplomatic relations with mainland Asia. More than a thousand years ago, this quiet valley held the kind of power that today belongs to the big city of Fukuoka. Dazaifu has since traded that role for another, as a centre of culture and history in southern Japan. The museum's story begins in 1994, when the Agency for Cultural Affairs created a committee to investigate a new type of museum. The next year, in 1995, Dazaifu was named as the site. The land is right next to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine, so a visit here can sit comfortably beside the shrine and the history of the old city. That choice shaped the museum's mission. Instead of focusing mainly on art, it puts history first. Its guiding idea is to understand Japanese culture from an Asian point of view, as a story of exchange with neighbors, especially China and Korea, rather than as something developed in isolation.

3. 03

   A Wave of Blue Glass at Kyushu National Museum

   Now look closely at the building itself, because here the architecture is part of the attraction. It was designed by Kiyonori Kikutake, a leading figure in the Metabolism movement, the Japanese architectural current of the 1960s. His idea was for the museum to blend into the forested hills of Dazaifu. The enormous roof rises and falls in a wave-like shape that echoes the mountain ridges you can see from the site. The undulating facade is covered in reflective blue glass panels. They shift in colour depending on the light and the sky, so the museum can look different from one visit to the next, or even from one hour to the next. Inside, towering glass walls frame the natural setting, so the hillside seems to become part of the display. The museum is also known for using technological innovations to make its collections accessible to visitors. Even if time is short and you cannot linger in the galleries, the architecture alone makes the walk up the hill worthwhile.

4. 04

   Inside Kyushu National Museum: A Journey Through Cultural Exchange

   Inside, the heart of the museum is the Cultural Exchange Exhibition on the fourth floor. This permanent display traces the history of Kyushu and Japan from prehistory through the Meiji era, with a particular emphasis on the rich exchange between Kyushu and its neighbors, China and Korea. Thousands of historical artifacts are on show, including National Treasures dating back millennia. The aim is to show how international contact helped shape Japanese culture over the centuries. On the third floor you will find the temporary special exhibitions. These are organized around specific themes, and they require a separate ticket from the permanent display. If you are travelling with children, or simply like to touch things, head to the first floor. There is a room called Ajippa, with hands-on exhibits from various Asian cultures. The first floor also has a gift shop. Outside the main building, the Greenhouse Restaurant offers more substantial dishes, such as seafood pasta or smoked salmon salad. As a rough guide, most visitors need two to three hours for the main exhibition, and about four hours if they add a special exhibition.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Getting here is part of the experience. A path, including a specially built access tunnel, links the museum to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine, and the walk takes about five minutes. You can pair the shrine and the museum into one day, moving from a place of ancient devotion to a gallery of Asian exchange. As you leave, turn around and look at the roofline once more. See whether it really does echo the ridges of the hills behind it, and watch how the blue glass changes with the sky. Then let the town itself raise a question: if this valley once handled Japan's dealings with the Asian mainland, what other traces of that old world might be waiting in the streets and temples of Dazaifu?