Skip to content
Lensmark

Your AI tour guide for Tokyo National Museum

Photograph a work in Tokyo National Museum and Lensmark tells you who made it, when, and why it matters, with every fact linked to its source.

Your tour guide, today

Week Pass $5.99 USD Seven days, 50 identifications. One payment, and it does not renew. A Lensmark account is required to complete checkout. Lensmark's Week Pass is separate from Tokyo National Museum admission and museum services. Download on the App Store

Tokyo National Museum

Tokyo, Japan

Lensmark is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tokyo National Museum.

Privacy

Take a photo and read the work's sourced story

Illustrative photo demo

Illustrative collection

  1. Take a permitted photo Use a photo allowed by the museum's current rules.
  2. Read the sourced history When Lensmark can verify the work, it explains what the sources support and links to them. When it cannot, it says so plainly.
  3. Ask a follow-up Continue with a question about the work's maker, age or significance.
  4. Your Tokyo National Museum walk saves itself. Just take pictures. Each work is kept with its sourced history, grouped by day.

The demo shows Beauty Looking Back, Hishikawa Moronobu, Edo period, 17th century. Hishikawa Moronobu, Source credit: gQFgWTeF6qSwkg at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Source image · Public domain. Image cropped to square. The other collection images illustrate Lensmark beyond the museum.

What the Tokyo National Museum collection covers

Tokyo National Museum began with an exposition at Tokyo's Yushima Seido Confucian shrine in 1872. Its collections bring together art, historical documents and archaeological objects from Japan and other parts of Asia. Museum FAQ

This page covers the museum's Ueno campus. Its Japanese and Asian collections include painting, sculpture, textiles, decorative arts and historical materials.

Its collection strengths include Japanese art and archaeology, Asian art, Buddhist sculpture and painting, and decorative arts and historical materials.

  • Pine Forest

    Hasegawa Tōhaku

    Date
    Azuchi-Momoyama period, 16th century

    Tōhaku used ink to evoke pine trees in mist. The museum describes rough brushwork and delicate gradations in this painting on paper, recorded as A-10471.

    Read the museum record

  • Beauty Looking Back

    Hishikawa Moronobu

    Date
    Edo period, 17th century

    Moronobu painted Beauty Looking Back in color on silk. The museum dates it to the seventeenth-century Edo period and records it as A-60.

    Read the museum record

  • The Bodhisattva Juntei Kannon

    Unknown artist

    Date
    Heian period, 12th century

    This painting shows Kannon surrounded by guardian deities. Made in color on silk with robes patterned in gold leaf, the twelfth-century work is recorded as A-11796, a gift of Tanaka Shinbi.

    Read the museum record

These are collection records, not confirmation that the works are on display today.

Check the photography rules first

Tokyo National Museum permits personal photography in its Collection Exhibitions except no-photo objects, including restricted loans or deposits; special-exhibition galleries and the Heiseikan's second floor prohibit photography, flash and additional lighting are forbidden, tripods, monopods and selfie sticks are forbidden, visitors must not be disturbed, and photographs must not be duplicated, distributed or used commercially. Read its current visitor conditions and follow gallery signs before taking a photo. Tokyo National Museum photography policy

Lensmark needs a connection to answer, so check your signal or any visitor Wi-Fi before you photograph a work.

Lensmark can explain Tokyo National Museum works. Let us be your AI tour guide today.

Try 3 identifications on us, free!