A Merchant House of 1907, Working as a Museum
The Ito City Kinoshita Mokutarō Memorial Museum (伊東市立木下杢太郎記念館, also written Itō Municipal Kinoshita Mokutaro Memorial Museum) is a two-storey wooden merchant building in Yukawa, Ito City, Shizuoka Prefecture, built in 1907 and entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 26 March 2015. It is owned by Ito City, has a building footprint of 140 square metres, and is open to the public as a museum for an admission fee of 100 yen.
Two things are worth separating at the outset, because guidebooks routinely merge them.
The registered building is the museum: a shop house from 1907, converted for exhibition use in 1985. Standing behind it is a second, older structure, the house where the writer was actually born in 1835, which carries a city designation rather than a national registration and is described by Ito City as the oldest surviving dwelling in the municipality. Visitors see both on one ticket. Only the front building is the nationally registered property described here.
The Building Itself
The facade faces south onto the street. The roof is hipped (yosemune) and laid in pantiles (sangawara), and a plaster cornice, a nokijabara, runs along beneath the eaves. That cornice does the visual work: it gives the exterior the appearance of a dozō storehouse, the fireproof plastered type that merchant families built to protect stock. Ito City describes the walls as carrying namako plasterwork, the lattice of raised white plaster ridges over dark tiles that reads as a diamond grid from a distance.
Inside, the original plan is still legible. A doma, an earth-floored passage, runs through the building slightly right of centre, and the living rooms sit toward the rear and on the upper floor. The front portion, now the exhibition room, began as a broad board-floored mise, the selling space, and the frontmost bay of that was earth-floored as well. Customers walked in off the street without changing their shoes.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs classifies the property under tertiary industry, which is the technically correct label and also a good hint about what to look for. This was built as a place of trade, not as a residence with a shop attached. The family business was a general wholesaler called Yonesō.
Ōta Masao, Who Wrote as Kinoshita Mokutarō
The man commemorated here had two careers that almost never appear in the same paragraph.
Ōta Masao (太田正雄) was born in 1885 in Yukawa village, now part of Ito City, the youngest child of the family that ran Yonesō. He graduated from the medical faculty of Tokyo Imperial University in 1911, taught at the South Manchuria Medical College in Mukden from 1916, studied in France in the early 1920s, and held professorships at Aichi Medical College, Tōhoku Imperial University and finally, from 1937, the dermatology chair at Tokyo Imperial University. Dermatologists still use the term nevus of Ota. In 1941 his work on fungi brought him the Légion d'honneur.
Under the pen name Kinoshita Mokutarō (木下杢太郎) the same man co-founded the Pan no Kai in 1908 with the poet Kitahara Hakushū, joined the launch of the magazine Subaru the following year, and became a central figure of the aesthetic school. His output includes the poetry collection Shokugo no Uta (1919), the plays Izumiya Somemonoten and Nanbanji Monzen, and the story collection Karakusa Byōshi.
The work that tends to move visitors most is the last one. Between spring 1943 and summer 1945, working at night under blackout regulations, he made 872 botanical drawings on ruled Western paper, each sheet 202 by 167 millimetres, recording the plant, the date and where he had picked it. The collection is known as Hyakkafu. He died on 15 October 1945, shortly after turning sixty.
The museum holds his manuscripts, first editions, letters from correspondents including Natsume Sōseki, illustrated and bound volumes, personal effects, and sheets from Hyakkafu, alongside furnishings and household tools belonging to the Ōta family. A twelve-minute video covers his life.
Visiting
The museum opens at 9:00 and closes at 16:30 from April to September, and at 16:00 from October to March. It closes on Mondays, moving to Tuesday when the Monday is a public holiday, and from 28 December to 4 January. Admission is 100 yen for adults and 50 yen for children of junior high school age and below, with reduced rates for groups of twenty or more. Visitors presenting a disability certificate, including through the Mirairo ID app, are admitted free along with one accompanying person.
Getting there is easy, which is part of the appeal. The museum is about five minutes on foot from Itō Station, the terminus of the JR Itō Line, roughly ninety minutes from Tokyo by Shinkansen and connecting train. There is free parking on site.
Behind the exhibition room, the 1835 birth house is entered after removing your shoes, and it is kept furnished. Visitors have reported that photography is permitted inside, though it is sensible to confirm at the desk.
One practical footnote. The national database records the address as Yukawa 2-70-5, while Ito City publishes it as Yukawa 2-11-5. This is the familiar split between a land-parcel number and a street address, and either will get you to the same building, but the city's version is the one to give a taxi driver.
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Q&A
- What are the opening hours and admission fee for the Ito City Kinoshita Mokutarō Memorial Museum?
- It opens 9:00 to 16:30 from April through September, and 9:00 to 16:00 from October through March. It is closed on Mondays, or Tuesday when the Monday falls on a public holiday, and from 28 December to 4 January. Admission is 100 yen for adults and 50 yen for junior high school students and younger, with group rates for parties of twenty or more.
- Is the Ito City Kinoshita Mokutarō Memorial Museum building the same as the writer's birth house?
- No. The registered building at the front is a merchant house of 1907, converted to a museum in 1985. The writer's actual birth house, built in 1835, stands behind it and is a city-designated cultural property that Ito City describes as the oldest surviving dwelling in the city. Both are seen on the same admission ticket, but only the front building holds the national registration.
- How do you get to the Ito City Kinoshita Mokutarō Memorial Museum from the station?
- It is about a five-minute walk from Itō Station on the JR Itō Line, reachable from Tokyo in roughly an hour and a half using the Shinkansen to Atami and a connecting train. Free parking is available for drivers.
- Who was Kinoshita Mokutarō, and why does Ito City have a museum for him?
- Kinoshita Mokutarō was the pen name of Ōta Masao (1885 to 1945), born in Yukawa in what is now Ito City. He was simultaneously a leading poet and playwright of the aesthetic school and a dermatologist who held the chair at Tokyo Imperial University and gave his name to the nevus of Ota. The museum opened in October 1985 to mark the centenary of his birth.
- Can you take photographs inside the Ito City Kinoshita Mokutarō Memorial Museum?
- Visitors have reported that interior photography is allowed, but the museum does not publish a formal photography policy, so it is worth asking at the reception desk before shooting. The birth house at the rear is entered with shoes removed.
Basic Information
| Name | Ito City Kinoshita Mokutarō Memorial Museum (伊東市立木下杢太郎記念館) |
|---|---|
| Location | Yukawa 2-70-5, Ito City, Shizuoka Prefecture (city address: Yukawa 2-11-5) |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 22-0208 |
| Year Designated | Registered and gazetted 26 March 2015 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Building footprint 140 m²; two storeys, wooden, tiled roof; built 1907, renovated 1985 |
| Owner | Ito City |
| Public Access | Open. 9:00 to 16:30 (April to September), 9:00 to 16:00 (October to March); closed Mondays and 28 December to 4 January; adults 100 yen, children 50 yen |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs: Ito City Kinoshita Mokutaro Memorial Museum
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00010460
- Cultural Heritage Online: Ito City Kinoshita Mokutaro Memorial Museum
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/289429
- Ito City: Kinoshita Mokutaro Memorial Museum
- https://www.city.ito.shizuoka.jp/gyosei/soshikikarasagasu/shogaigakushuka/bunka_supotsu/2/3/2380.html
- Ito City: Kinoshita Mokutaro Memorial Museum, visitor information
- https://www.city.ito.shizuoka.jp/gyosei/soshikikarasagasu/shogaigakushuka/bunka_supotsu/2/3/2362.html
- Iwanami Shoten: Shinpen Hyakkafu Hyakusen (annotated edition of the botanical drawings)
- https://www.iwanami.co.jp/book/b249212.html
Last verified: 2026.08.13