The story
In 1930 a textile magnate named Ohara Magosaburo opened a Greek-templed building in the canal town of Kurashiki and gave Japan its first museum of Western art. He built it as a memorial. His close friend, the painter Kojima Torajiro, had travelled to Europe on Ohara's money in the 1920s and bought pictures straight from studios and dealers in Paris. Kojima died in 1929, and the museum went up the next year around what he had gathered.
Because the buying was done by a painter with a good eye and real access, the collection punches far above the town's size. Its most surprising piece is El Greco's 'The Annunciation', a genuine work by the Toledo master turning up in a small Japanese city, alongside Monet, Gauguin and Matisse.
The columned facade still faces the willow-lined canal, and Japanese art students who once could not afford the sea voyage to Europe have been coming here to stand in front of real French painting for nearly a century.
