Nihon Minka-en

Open-air museum of 25 traditional Japanese farmhouses from across the country

On a hillside in Ikuta Ryokuchi Park, about 25 traditional Japanese buildings — farmhouses, merchant shops, a village water mill, and a kabuki stage — have been collected from around the country and reassembled in an open-air museum. The buildings span roughly 400 years of vernacular architecture and represent regional styles from Tohoku, the Japan Alps, and the Kanto plain.

The houses can be entered; some have reconstructed interiors with period furniture and farming equipment. The atmosphere on a weekday morning, when the park is quiet, approaches something remarkable — an assemblage of lost buildings in a landscape of bamboo groves and pond gardens. The approach from Mukogaoka-yuen Station (Odakyu Line) winds through pleasant parkland. Allow two to three hours.

things to do sight museum
A story
One farmhouse on the hillside here is over 400 years old and came from Niigata Prefecture, where it sheltered three generations of a farming family through the heavy mountain winters. When the village was developed, the entire structure was numbered beam by beam, dismantled, and shipped to Kawasaki — a practice that has preserved buildings that would otherwise have rotted or burned.