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National Museum of Japanese History

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Rekihakunational museumSakuraJapanese historyreconstructions

Illustration of National Museum of Japanese History, Chiba — Illustration — not a photograph

What National Museum of Japanese History looked like originally and what it looks like now are two different stories — both worth knowing before you arrive.

This is the national museum for the history of Japan, and it is not in Tokyo — it is on the grounds of the old Sakura castle, forty minutes out on the Keisei line, which is why almost no foreign visitor ends up in it. The scale is a surprise: six permanent galleries running from prehistory to the post-war period across a very large building, built around full-size reconstructions rather than cases of objects.

What it does better than anywhere else is ordinary life. There is a reconstructed medieval street, a section of Edo-period Nihonbashi, a mid-twentieth-century apartment interior, and a gallery on folk belief. Rekihaku, as everyone calls it, is a research institute as much as a display, and the labelling assumes you are interested rather than in a hurry. There is also a separate botanical garden of plants used in daily life, a hundred yen, up the road.

What to know before you go

When to go

Year-round | Indoor museum

Opening hours

9:30 AM – 5:00 PM (March–September) | 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM (October–February) | Last entry 30 minutes before closing

Closed: Closed Mondays, or the following weekday when the Monday is a holiday | 27 December – 4 January

Time to allow

3–4 hours

Fee

¥900 general | ¥500 university students | Free for high school age and under | Botanical garden ¥100

How to reach it

Access notes

117 Jonai-cho, Sakura, in Sakura Castle Park. About a short walk from Keisei-Sakura Station or by bus from JR Sakura Station. Closed Mondays, or the following weekday when the Monday is a holiday, and 27 December – 4 January. Admission ¥900 general and ¥500 university students; free for high school age and under. The Kurashi no Shokubutsuen botanical garden is ¥100, free for high school age and under.

What locals know

**Allow three hours minimum.** Six permanent galleries covering the whole of Japanese history at full scale. Two hours gets you halfway and leaves you rushing the modern period, which is the most unusual part. **The reconstructions are the point.** A medieval street, a slice of Edo Nihonbashi, a post-war apartment. This is a museum built around walking into things rather than looking at them in cases. **Free for anyone under eighteen.** Unusual for a national museum of this scale, and worth knowing for families. **Add the plant garden for ¥100.** Separate from the main building, on the old castle grounds, and free on several designated days a year. **It is in a castle park.** Sakura Castle Park surrounds the museum, and the samurai houses and the bamboo lane at Hiyodorizaka are a short walk away, which makes a full day out of a town most people pass through on the way to Narita.

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