The opened in Kobe, Japan in 1982. It is one of Japan's many museums which are supported by a municipality. The museum resulted from the merger of the Municipal Archaeological Art Museum and Municipal Namban Art Museum. The museum is housed in a neoclassical building built in 1935: the former Kobe branch of the

Yokohama Specie Bank was a Japanese bank founded in Yokohama, Japan in the year 1880. Its assets were transferred to The Bank of Tokyo (now MUFG Bank) in 1946. The bank played a significant role in Japanese overseas trade, especially with China. The original b ...

. The collection of nearly thirty-nine thousand items comprises archaeological artifacts, works of art, old maps, and historical documents and artifacts relating to Kobe. It includes an important collection of

Nanban art refers to Japanese art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries influenced by contact with the or 'Southern barbarians', traders and missionaries from Europe and specifically from Portugal. It is a Sino-Japanese word, Chinese '' Nánmán' ...

(the former Hajime Ikenaga Collection), as well as a set of ''

dōtaku are Japanese bells smelted from relatively thin bronze and richly decorated. Dotaku were used for about 400 years, between the second century B.C. and the second century C.E. (corresponding to the end of the Yayoi era), and were nearly only used ...

'' and other items of the

Yayoi period The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age. Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon ...

from excavations at Sakuragaoka that have been designated a

National Treasure The idea of national treasure, like national epics and national anthems, is part of the language of romantic nationalism, which arose in the late 18th century and 19th centuries. Nationalism is an ideology that supports the nation as the funda ...

References

External links

Kobe City Museum homepage

Kobe City Museum e-guide
City museums in Japan Museums in Kobe Archaeological museums in Japan Art museums and galleries in Kobe Art museums established in 1982 1982 establishments in Japan Registered Monuments of Japan {{Japan-museum-stub

See also

References

External links