The story
On a hillside above Takayama, in the mountains of the old Hida province, stands a long pale building topped with a stepped temple form that looks borrowed from ancient Mexico. This is the Hikaru Museum, opened in the spring of 1999. It was first conceived as a memorial to Kotama Okada, founder of the Mahikari religious movement, and since 2017 it has been run by a general foundation as a registered museum.
The art rooms mix East and West. A national treasure, a long tachi sword forged by the smith Yasutsugu, goes on periodic display, along with paintings by Yokoyama Taikan and ukiyo-e prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige. The small Western room holds Vincent van Gogh's Peasant Woman Washing, painted in 1885 during his dark Dutch years at Nuenen, and the collection also includes Claude Monet's Meadow in Giverny, Morning.
The rest of the museum turns to deep time. One hall gathers fossils and rocks from the Hida region beside a life-size model of Kagasaurus, a dinosaur known from Japan, and another holds archaeology from around the world, especially rich in pieces from Central and South America.
