Facility Overview
The Chigasaki City Museum opened in July 2022 in Tsutsumi, Chigasaki, replacing the 50-year-old Chigasaki City Museum of Culture (located on the city’s central coast).
The museum’s unique mission is to “accumulate and utilize materials and other information on the nature of Chigasaki and the lives of the people who lived there, and to pass them on to the people of the future through activities conducted in cooperation with citizens and other users.
Surrounding the museum are the former Wada Family Residence and the former Mitsuhashi Family Residence, both designated as important cultural properties by the city, Jomidera Temple, the family temple of Ooka Koshizenmori, and the Komayose River, where wild birds, fish, and other creatures can be seen, making it a pleasant place to stroll.
The area also serves as a base facility connecting natural, historical, and cultural resources such as the river, valley doors, and ruins such as the Shimoterao government office complex and Tsutsumi shell mounds.
Activity Themes
Museum Exhibits and Collections
Floor map
The theme of the Chigasaki City Museum’s activities is “Stories of the Earth and People. The Chigasaki City Museum will introduce the diverse topography of Chigasaki and tell the stories and lifestyles that people have spun in the area.
- 〇 Basic Exhibition Room
- Introducing Chigasaki’s natural environment and the lives of its people and the culture that has been nurtured against this backdrop from multiple perspectives
- 〇 Special Exhibition Room
- Special and Special Exhibitions
Introducing the results of our research, collection and storage activities, and holding traveling exhibitions.
- 〇 Topographic model of Nagasaki
- Chigasaki’s topography at a glance! Topographic models, topographic maps, aerial photographs, etc. are superimposed.
- 〇 Chigasaki Historical Picture Scroll
- This is a picture scroll-style chronological table that shows the history of the land and people of Chigasaki.
- 〇 Summary Exhibits
- Valuable materials are displayed in the show window. The captions of the materials are located in the exhibition room, a device that allows visitors to carefully enjoy the shape of the materials.
- 〇 Library room
- Browsing, borrowing, and reference of books related to the local area
- 〇 Citizen Exchange Space
- Workshops, training and courses, and guidance
Introducing materials and holding citizen exhibitions, etc.
- 〇 Storage room
- Archaeological, historical/folkloric, natural, library, and special collections
- 〇 Material Sorting and Research Office
- Organizing materials and research work
What kind of exhibits can I see?
When you enter the museum, you will see a "summary exhibition" like a show window where exhibition materials symbolizing the nature, history and culture of Chigasaki are lined up. It is designed so that you can enjoy the appearance of the exhibited materials such as the shape, color, and texture of the exhibited materials. Note that, material names and explanations (captions) can be viewed in the basic exhibition room.
In addition, before entering the exhibition room, there is a "Topographic Model of Chigasaki" that shows the changes in the topography of Chigasaki, and a "Chigasaki Historical Picture Scroll" that shows the flow of history. Here, you can get an overview of Chigasaki and invite visitors to the exhibition room.
In the basic exhibition room, the land of Chigasaki is divided into five landforms: “ocean,” “dune,” “river,” “lowland,” and “hill,” and each of these landforms is divided into 17 themes to explain how nature spread, how people lived, and how culture was cultivated. There are eight exhibition tables called “units” in the exhibition rooms, and the 17 themes are replaced periodically to create a museum where visitors can make new discoveries every time they visit.
In the Special Exhibition Hall, there will be special exhibitions based on the results of research activities, as well as exhibitions co-hosted with other museums and traveling exhibitions held within the prefecture and on a national scale.
The museum has also established a citizen exchange space as a place where visitors can deepen their interaction with each other through the museum. Here, lectures, lectures, workshops, etc. will be held, and exhibitions will be developed in cooperation with citizens and in collaboration with other social education facilities, universities, research institutions, companies, etc.
There is also a space in the “library” where visitors can borrow books from the library on nature, history, and culture. In addition, the museum’s books” will also be exhibited in conjunction with special exhibitions.
What is a storage room?
The Chigasaki City Museum will carefully store approximately 70,000 materials related to nature, archaeology, history, and folklore that were collected during the activities of its predecessor, the Museum of Cultural Heritage. The storage room is used to preserve these materials. The storeroom is divided into six rooms for each type of material: “nature,” “immersion materials (materials preserved in liquid),” “archaeology,” “books,” “history and folklore,” and “special,” and the environment is adjusted to the temperature and humidity appropriate for each type of material. The museum considers these materials as “entrusted to us by the people of the future” and will continue to collect them and carefully store them to hand them down to the next generation.