140th Anniversary Thematic Exhibitions: The Variety and Appeal of the Tokugawa Collection of Books

The Tokyo National Museum collection includes approximately 18,000 Japanese books, of which about 12,000 were donated to the museum in 1943 by Mr. Tokugawa Muneyoshi (the twelfth head of the Hitotsubashi Tokugawa family). This donation is known as the Tokugawa Collection of Books. Most of these books were published or transcribed during the Edo period (1603-1868) and Meiji era (1868-1912), on subjects including art, religion, military arts, education, customs, and geography.

Since 2009, museum staff have been updating the basic information on every item in the museum collection. As part of this, a survey of the Tokugawa Collection of Books has revealed the ways of conveying information in Japan in the early modern era and earlier. Before people were able to transfer information simply with photographs and moving images, the spread of information was mainly through printed materials. The survey has shown that people of the early modern era tried to use many ingenious methods to convey knowledge and skills. Methods include books with pages of small, densely-packed characters; carefully-drawn illustrations of plants and wildlife; and three-dimensional paper models of objects.

This thematic exhibition displays intriguing examples from the Tokugawa Collection of Books, in order to introduce its wide-ranging content and variety of forms. We hope visitors experience the appeal of Edo-period and Meiji-era Japanese books, as exemplified by this collection.