Jingu Chokokan and Nogyokan Museums

The Jingu Museums on Kurata Hill

The Jingu Chokokan and Nogyokan Museums (神宮徴古館・農業館, Jingu Chokokan and Nogyokan) are museums of the Grand Shrine of Ise on Kurata Hill in Kandakushimotocho, Ise City, Mie Prefecture: the Chokokan of 1909 and the Nogyokan of 1905, registered together in 1998 as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the owner as the Jingu religious corporation. The Chokokan was built to collect and display historical materials of the shrine, and the Nogyokan to promote agriculture.

The Jingu museums note that both were designed by Katayama Tokuma, the leading architect of imperial buildings and designer of the Akasaka Palace.

The Shinenkai and the Museums

According to the Jingu museums, the Shinenkai society was founded in 1886 to keep the shrine precincts pure and to open a comprehensive museum with a zoo, botanical garden and library on Kurata Hill.

The plan proved too large, and with a financial panic and the Sino-Japanese War donations fell short, so the society first built the Nogyokan in front of the Outer Shrine in 1891. It was moved to Kurata Hill and enlarged in 1905, and the Chokokan opened on 29 September 1909.

In 1911 the society dedicated both buildings and their collections to the Jingu and dissolved; the Jingu formally named them the Chokokan Nogyokan that year.

The Two Buildings

The Jingu museums describe the Chokokan as a single-storey Renaissance-style building on a U-shaped plan, faced in terracotta granite-effect blocks made of Bizen ware, with a domed central roof. The Nogyokan is a tiled timber building in a Japanese-Western style inspired by the Phoenix Hall of the Byodoin, built as a single-storey cloister.

The Agency notes that the Chokokan was extensively rebuilt after war damage but its outer walls survive, and that the Nogyokan, once square around a courtyard, was reduced to its front half when it was recently moved.

Visiting the Jingu Chokokan and Nogyokan

The Jingu museums are open 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (viewing until 4:30 p.m.), closed on Thursdays (the next weekday if a holiday) and from 29 to 31 December.

Admission to the Chokokan and Nogyokan is 500 yen for adults and 100 yen for schoolchildren; a combined ticket with the Jingu Art Museum is 700 and 200 yen. Buses stop at Jingu Chokokan-mae on the Miyuki road. Enquiries: 0596-22-1700.