The story
Kasama, a pottery town in Ibaraki Prefecture northeast of Tokyo, was the hometown of the art dealer Hasegawa Jin. With his wife Rinko he founded Galerie Nichidō, a Tokyo gallery dealing in Japanese and Western painting. In November 1972, for the gallery's 45th anniversary and their own golden wedding, the couple opened the Kasama Nichidō Museum of Art on the site of his family home.
The French Pavilion runs from Impressionism to the School of Paris. Here visitors find Van Gogh's road at Saint-Rémy with a woman walking along it, painted while he was a patient at the asylum there, and a small, early Temptation of Saint Anthony by Cézanne from around 1874. Monet, Renoir and Degas hang nearby, and later rooms bring in Matisse, Picasso, Chagall and Foujita.
The museum's own speciality began in 1967, when Hasegawa asked painter friends for pictures painted on the palettes they actually worked with. That collection now numbers some 350 palettes, about 220 of them on permanent display. Outside, a sculpture garden holds 19 works by Japanese sculptors.
