MOA Museum of Art in Atami (1) - Features and lion dance

Atami is a resort town famous for its hot springs. It is the easternmost town in Shizuoka Prefecture, while Hamamatsu is in the westernmost area. It takes more than two and a half hours to go there by local trains.

Yesterday, I went to MOA Museum of Art in Atami because I heard that they had lion dance performances during the first three days of the New Year. Lion dance is a traditional performing art　for the New Year to expel evil spirits, but I had never seen it actually.

I arrived at Atami around 10:00 and took a bus to the museum. The bus went up a steep hill, and it took just 7 minutes to get to the museum.

This is the entrance of the museum.

Even after arriving at the museum, I had to take four long escalators to reach the main building.

At the last landing, there was a huge kaleidoscope with a diameter of about 20m on the ceiling. I looked for a while how colors were changing. It was one of the most impressive views in the museum.

I took the last escalator. When it ended, a museum staff member guided me to go outside. There I had a splendid view of the sea.

I thought already that it was worth coming there though I hadn’t seen anything in the galleries yet. The view toward the building was also beautiful.

This is a view from the stairs.

It may be the best to see from the lobby in the building.

MOA Museum of Art has excellent collection with about 3500 items including 3 national treasures and 66 important cultural properties. I took some pictures of items I liked. One of them is a picture on a screen from the current exhibition of Takeuchi Seiho Collection. The birds are sparrows.

The museum has also fine craftworks like this.

There were some paintings of Atami. I liked the tone of this picture.

Besides items in the galleries, MOA Museum of Art has two must-see things. One of them is the Golden Tea Room, a replica of the one built by a feudal warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 16th century. The weight of the gold used for this is about 60 kg. It really looked gorgeous.

The other feature of the museum is an all-cypress noh stage. Noh is a classical Japanese musical drama. Yesterday they had lion dance performances on this stage.

This is the first performer with a red lion head. Under the lion head, the performer had a mask of a woman. The performance seemed to have a story. I couldn’t understand it well, but the movement of the lion was lively. A group of people played the flute and drums behind the lion.

Somehow, the music reminded me of a TV program of Japanese folk tales I used to watch in my childhood. It was appealing.

The second performer had a golden lion head and also performed dynamically. Finally, the lion unfolded a scroll with a message “Happy New Year” held between its teeth, which concluded this excellent performance.