Artizon Museum

The Artizon began as a tire man's private passion. Shojiro Ishibashi, who founded the Bridgestone rubber company, opened his collection to the public in 1952 on a floor of the company's Tokyo headquarters, at a moment when postwar Japan had little money for Western art. He kept buying anyway, and worked at the same time to stop important Japanese paintings from leaving the country.

The result is often called the finest group of Impressionist and modern European painting in Asia, with Monet, Renoir, Manet, Cézanne and Gauguin, and a strong run of 20th-century names from Picasso to Rothko and Zao Wou-Ki. Japanese modern painting hangs alongside them, so the two traditions are read together.

In 2020 the museum reopened under the name Artizon, a blend of art and horizon, in a new tower near Tokyo Station, where it rotates the collection through its galleries rather than keep a fixed display.