The Miho Museum (Miho Museum) is located near the town of Shigaraki-no-Sato in the Shiga Prefecture of Japan, northeast of Kyoto. The museum was the dream of Mihoko Koyama (after whom it is named), the heiress to the Toyobo textile business, and one of the richest women in Japan. In 1970 she founded the Shinji Shumeikai spiritual movement (see Shumei) which is now said to have some 300,000 members worldwide, and in the 1990's she commissioned the museum to be built close to the Shumei temple in the Shiga mountains.

Collection

The Miho Museum houses Mihoko Koyama's private collection of Asian and Western antiques as well as US$300 million to US$1 billion (depending on your sources) worth of other pieces bought on the world market by Shumei in the years before the museum was opened in 1997. Over two thousand pieces in total, of which about 250 are displayed at any one time.

Each exhibit in the Miho Museum was carefully selected as much for its artistic beauty as its historical significance, and the whole collection is finely displayed and skillfully lit.

Architecture

The renowned arcitect I. M. Pei had earlier designed the bell tower at Misono , Shumei's international headquarters and spiritual centre close by the site of the Miho Museum. Happy with the results of this collaboration, Mihoko Koyama and her daughter, Hiroko Koyama , again commissioned Pei to design the Miho.

I. M. Pei's design is a masterpiece, executed in a hilly and forested landscape that he came to call Shangri-La. About three quarters of the 45,000 square meter building is situated underground, carved out of a rocky mountaintop. The roof is an enormous glass and steel construction, while the exterior and interior walls and floor are made of a warm beige-coloured limestone from France – the same material used by Pei in the reception hall of the Louvre. Compared to marble, it creates a softer atmosphere and a more relaxed lightness. The colours of the stone, the silver space frame, the textured louvers and the vegetation outside each counterbalance each other in wonderful harmony.

Perhaps the most spectacular part of Pei's achievement, however, is the approach to the hilltop "paradise". When you arrive at the site, you first see a modest reception pavilion amid cedar trees, facing a circular courtyard, and you may be forgiven for thinking this is the museum. Opposite this building is a wide curved walkway lined with peach trees that leads to the mouth of a gleaming stainless-steel-lined tunnel cut into a ridge. As you walk into this silent, echoless, vast tunnel – it is at least three traffic lanes wide – it sweeps you in a single, 200-meter curve until sunlight suddenly appears, and – through the graceful cables of a half suspension bridge cantilevered 120 meters across a deep, narrow gorge – you finally see the Chinese-style moon-gate entrance to the museum pavilion.

External Links

• Miho Museum
• Shumei
• Louvre
• Pei Cobb Freed & Partners