As the bustling capital of Japan, Tokyo is home to hundreds of museums, ranging from august institutions with endless catalogs of national treasures to niche collections of curious obsessions (Looking at you, Meguro Parasitological Museum). But for visitors with a limited amount of time, we have narrowed down a list of the best in town—here are the nine best museums in Tokyo.
The National Art Center, Tokyo
The undulating glass and steel structure of The National Art Center merits a visit on its own. The light-drenched building was the last completed work by Kisho Kurokawa, Pritzker Prize-winning founder of the Metabolist movement. Although it has no permanent collection, NACT has one of the largest exhibition spaces in Japan, consisting of 12 galleries for traveling exhibitions in diverse and crowd-pleasing genres. Recent shows include retrospectives of designer Hanae Mori and Fauvist Henri Matisse, while annual juried exhibitions such as the Nitten show inevitably draw large crowds. A brasserie by French chef Paul Bocuse and the sunny outdoor deck at the first-floor cafe are popular dining spots away from the crowds of Roppongi.
Mori Art Museum
PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images
The Mori Art Museum, run by the eponym-obsessed developer Mori Building, sits atop the 53rd floor of Roppongi Hills Mori Tower. In addition to heady city views, it offers well-curated exhibitions largely dealing with contemporary art and architecture. Big names like Takashi Murakami, Sou Fujimoto, and Louise Bourgeois have all helmed solo shows here, but the most interesting offerings are often themed around meaty issues like post-pandemic wellbeing, the impact of AI, and art in the age of environmental crisis. The triennial Roppongi Crossing series, a survey of contemporary art in Japan, is unmissable for those who want to understand the local scene.
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum
Shuttarou/Adobe Stock
As the name suggests, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum focuses on photography and video. Also known as TOP, it covers five floors in the Yebisu Garden Palace development, housing three exhibition halls, a 190-seat theater, a library, and a cafe. Shows draw from a collection of around 36,000 works, and the museum also hosts traveling exhibitions like the annual World Press Photo awards showcase. Featuring both contemporary and historical artists from Japan and abroad, TOP offers a broad-spectrum view on the medium of photography.
Tokyo National Museum
Alfredo Martinez/Getty Images
Like New York’s Museum Mile, the area around Ueno Park has the densest collection of world-class museums in the city, including the National Museum of Nature and Science, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, and the National Museum of Western Art. But the queen of them all is the Tokyo National Museum, Japan’s oldest and largest. This is the place to go for Japanese art and artifacts, with a strong, 110,000-piece collection of paintings, tea ceremony ceramics, samurai swords and armor, kimonos, lacquerware, sculpture, ukiyo-e prints, and more. And that’s just in the Honkan, or main building. The Toyokan has five floors of Asian art, the Hyokeikan and Heiseikan host special exhibitions, and the Gallery of Horyu-ji Treasures has Buddhist artifacts from a 7th-century temple. Plus, there are five historic tea houses preserved in a large Japanese garden.
The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation
PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty Images
Known by its nickname Miraikan, or museum of the future, this sprawling facility on the artificial island of Odaiba is full of fun, hands-on exhibits on science and cutting-edge technology. The two permanent exhibits have easy-to-understand, dual-language signage appropriate for both kids and adults and cover a range of topics from cellular biology to space exploration. Interactive androids and a 6.5-meter LED globe demonstrating topics like weather patterns and human migration at scale are particular highlights, as is the 3D dome theater whose programs naturally include planetarium fare but also in-depth explanations of how animation and theoretical physics work.
Edo-Tokyo Museum
John S Lander/LightRocket via Getty Images
Reopening in March 2026 after a four-year renovation, this museum covers the history and culture of Tokyo, known as Edo until 1868. Inside a mammoth stilted building inspired by old waterside storehouses, life-size displays depicting urban life vividly illustrate the daily routines, cultural heritage, politics, and history that have shaped Tokyo. The permanent exhibit includes a full-scale replica of the Nihonbashi Bridge, an arching wooden structure that once joined the five roads to Edo at the gate to the capital. Sister museum Edo Tokyo Open-Air Architectural Museum in the western suburbs of Koganei similarly preserves and reconstructs historic buildings that would otherwise have been lost to Tokyo’s relentless development and frequent natural disasters, allowing visitors to literally walk through the evolution of Japanese architecture.
Nezu Museum
IBRESTER/Adobe Stock
The private Nezu Museum houses the collection of industrialist and politician Kaichiro Nezu, who had a penchant for premodern Buddhist art from Japan and East Asia. It includes seven national treasures and rare Chinese bronzes dating from as far back as the 13th century BC, as well as painstakingly preserved calligraphy, paintings, textiles, and ceramics. It’s all housed in a spare modern building designed by Kengo Kuma and ringed by an expansive Japanese landscape garden where visitors are invited to stroll. The traditional teahouses within are occasionally open for tea ceremony and other events, but at other times, the glass-walled Nuzucafe is a great place to grab refreshments while enjoying panoramic garden views.
teamLab Planets
teamLab Planets
Insta-darling art collective teamLab has two locations in Tokyo, Planets in Toyosu and Borderless in Azabudai. While Toyosu is a bit out of the way, Planets is the larger and more immersive of the two, with engaging exhibits that include a room full of digital koi in knee-deep water, a forest of dangling orchids, and rooms of video game-like physical challenges to jump, balance, or wiggle through. You can easily spend a full day poking around the interactive artworks, which respond to the presence and actions of each visitor. A glass-encased bar and pitch-dark ramen restaurant on site similarly enhance their dining experience with tactile digital art.
Ghibli Museum
pict-japan/Adobe Stock
Less like a museum and more like an immersion in the whimsical world of anime director Hayao Miyazaki, the Ghibli Museum in the suburbs of Mitaka will be the first stop for fans of manga and anime. Assuming they can get in. Tickets for a specific date and time must be purchased online in advance, and they sell out quickly. Slots for the following month go on sale on the 10th of each month. Once in, you are invited to wander freely through a tactile, greenery-filled maze filled with references to beloved films like “Laputa,” “Porco Rosso,” and “My Neighbor Totoro.” Exhibits cover the history and art of animation, while a theater shows a series of short films exclusively available at the museum.
Read the full article here