Very small museum, took less than 30min to look around. Very cheap though and the exhibit was nice.

Very small museum.

A small art museum with a quiet presence you'd never expect from something facing Kan-nana. This time I went to see an exhibition of modern and contemporary bamboo crafts that had been featured on TV. There weren't many pieces, but the content was rich.

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It faces Kan-nana, but once you step onto the grounds, the noise doesn't bother you. A quiet, small museum. According to the leaflet, the Saida family is a distinguished family said to have as its distant ancestor Nakahara Kaneto of the Seiwa Genji, a senior retainer of Kiso Yoshinaka. On the Buratamori broadcast, which raised this museum's profile, the family was introduced as having played a major role in the development of Setagaya's tea industry in the Meiji period. The main house with the garden shown on Buratamori is designated a cultural property of Setagaya Ward, but it's still used as a private residence and isn't normally open to the public. At Setagaya Ward's request, it's apparently opened only a few days a year, and only to people chosen by lottery. For similar reasons, the museum is open on weekends only on the 4th Saturday, because opening on weekends would bring too many visitors and cause problems. There's only one exhibition room, and it closes for a few days when exhibitions change over. Today (June 28, 2024) there was a gallery talk by the curator, "Watanabe Seitei: Lingering Echoes of Birds and Flowers." I knew nothing about it and learned of "Watanabe Seitei" for the first time, but the talk was very easy to follow and got me interested.

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The Saida family was apparently one of the families that developed this area, Daita Village. In 1997, a memorial museum was built on the old family's 1,500-tsubo estate, displaying the Saida family's artworks. Next to the museum is the Saida family's front gate, and beyond it there's apparently a mansion built in 1934. There's only one exhibition room and it isn't large, but at the autumn 2025 special exhibition, about 40 bamboo craft works were on display, and it was quite worth seeing.