Yokohama Silk Art Museum

About

To mark the hundredth anniversary of the opening of Yokohama Port, Kanagawa Governor Uchiyama Iwataro proposed building the Silk Center International Trade and Tourism Hall; it opened on March 12, 1959, with the Silk Museum inside it from the start. The art critic and former Tokyo National Museum curator Hijikata Teiichiro was among those who served on its preparatory committee. Designed by the office of architect Sakakura Junzo, the Silk Center is a steel-frame reinforced-concrete building with eight floors above ground and two below; its lower floors housed the museum, offices, and shops, while its upper floors held a tourist hotel. The museum's own exhibition space is split between 798 square meters on the second floor and 558 square meters on the third. The collection totals 13,257 items centered on raw silk, silk textiles, and sericulture tools. On the first floor, "Wonderful Farm" lets visitors observe live silkworms, while the "Journey of Silk" section displays historical garments and folk costumes. After expanding its natural-science displays in 1969 and gaining registered-museum status in 1973, the museum underwent a full renewal for its fortieth anniversary in 1999; cumulative visitors passed two million in June 2017, and annual attendance in 2024 was 21,681.