Tokorozawa Local Art Museum

Tokorozawa Local Art Museum

Tokorozawa Local Art Museum (所沢郷土美術館, Tokorozawa Kyōdo Bijutsukan) in Kume, Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture, occupies the old home of the Hiratsuka family of doctors, whose main house of 1854, gatehouse and storehouse were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 9, 2005 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). According to Tokorozawa City, they were the first buildings in the city to be registered.

The museum also writes its name with the older character 澤 (所澤郷土美術館). Today the main house is open as a private gallery showing paintings, sculpture, calligraphy and crafts by artists living in the city (Tokorozawa City).

A Family of Physicians

Tokorozawa City says the Hiratsuka family produced doctors for four generations, from the ninth head to the twelfth, and that the ninth served as physician to the Matsudaira lords of the Kawagoe domain. The main house and the gate are credited to the eleventh head, Hiratsuka Sojun Kiyonobu; a Saitama Prefecture landscape record also describes the house as built in the closing years of the shogunate by a doctor named Hiratsuka Sojun, writing his name with a different character.

The Agency records that a building ledger names the master carpenter of the main house as Shinzaemon, a carpenter of Uchikoshi village, and that he also built the gate. The main house dates from 1854, the gate from the following year, 1855, and the storehouse from the early Meiji era.

How the Estate Is Laid Out

The three buildings still read as a doctor's country estate. On the east edge of the plot, set back a little from the road, the Nagayamon gatehouse runs north to south, with the two-storey storehouse beside it to the north; the Agency notes that together they form the public face of the house.

The main house stands toward the west of the plot, facing east (Agency for Cultural Affairs), so it faces the gate across the plot under an irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof. Inside, the reception rooms leading from the Shikidai entrance to the inner room are said to reflect the standing of a family that served a daimyo as physicians.

Tokorozawa City listed the main house, gate and storehouse of the Tokorozawa Local Art Museum among the landscape features honoured in its Tokoton Landscape Awards in fiscal 2011 (Tokorozawa City; Saitama Prefecture). Each building is described on its own page.

Visiting

According to Tokorozawa City, the Tokorozawa Local Art Museum opens on Sundays and public holidays from April to November and closes from December to March. Hours are 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and admission is free. The Saitama Prefecture record likewise says the grounds can be visited on opening days.

It is about 15 minutes on foot from the west exit of Tokorozawa Station on the Seibu Ikebukuro and Shinjuku lines. By the Tokoro Bus city loop (South Route, Azuma loop), get off at Nanryo Chugakko-shita, right by the museum (Tokorozawa City). No official information on parking was found.

The city's regional plan for cultural properties, drawn up in March 2026, still describes the main house as open to the public as a private museum. Opening days can change from year to year, so check the city's cultural property page before you go.