Newly Acquired Treasures for Japan

Among the various affairs concerning cultural properties entrusted to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the least known, but one of its most important ones, is the precedence of the State over third parties concerning purchases of cultural properties.

This is meant to prevent the outflow of cultural properties that are truly invaluable national assets from Japan as well as dispersion within the country. This institution has helped the Government to safeguard many cultural properties for the Nation.

Those that had been acquired until March 2001 used to be transferred for public display to national museums. But after the museums had been turned into "Independent Administrative Institution National Museum" the policy has changed. For example, the Agency has these newly acquired assets to itself and lends pieces to locally held exhibitions in its own right.

This exhibition, Newly Acquired Treasures for Japan, aims at showing one branch of the Agency's main fields of activities. Though small in scale, the quality of the newly acquired treasures is something comparable to those exhibited at any major exhibitions.