The stairs led down to the Yamatane Museum of Art's exhibition room in the basement

Stairs of the Yamatane Museum — Staircase of Yamatane Museum of Art

There is a museum in Hiroo that collects many modern Japanese paintings from the Meiji era onward. It is the Yamatane Museum of Art. It has works by Taikan Yokoyama, Gyokudo Kawai, and Goshu Hayami.

After paying the admission fee at the ticket counter near the entrance, the stairs leading to the exhibition rooms are right behind you. The stairs go down to the basement where the exhibition rooms are. Yes. Surprisingly, the exhibition rooms of the Yamatane Museum of Art are located in the basement. The reason I found this surprising was because the building that houses the Yamatane Museum has six floors above ground, so I assumed that if you entered through the first floor entrance, the exhibition rooms would be on the second floor or higher.

Looking at the dimly lit stairs leading down to the basement, I felt as if the works are stored in an underground shelter, so that even if they are attacked indiscriminately like the Tokyo Air Raids during World War II, the artworks in the collection will not be burned down. Come to think of it, I have heard a rumor that the Shrine of the Book of the Israel Museum, which exhibits the Dead Sea Scrolls, said to be the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century, is itself a nuclear shelter so that the Dead Sea Scrolls would not be destroyed in a nuclear attack. I wonder if the rumor is true.

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