In the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, I like the place with the staircase connecting the third and fourth floors because of its openness

As the name suggests, Opera City in Hatsudai is not only home to the New National Theatre, which has an opera house, a slightly smaller medium-sized theater, and a small theater, but also a concert hall in a high-rise building. This is a dense area of theaters and concert halls. And this is not the only cultural facility. There are also two museums. The Opera City is so crowded with cultural facilities that one can almost feel the momentum of the Japanese economy at the time of its construction.

On this particular day, I was visiting the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, one of the two museums. It is not so famous, but it mainly holds special exhibitions of contemporary art, and it also houses the works of Katsura Funakoshi and Lee Ufan. These collections were started by Kotaro Terada, whose generosity led to the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery acquiring them. Hence, they are called the "Terada Collection."

What is interesting here is the name of the collector, Kotaro Terada. He is not a well-known entrepreneur, and there is no entry for him in WIKIPEDIA. He is a mysterious figure. According to my research, he was a landowner in and around Tokyo Opera City. According to the Musashino Art University website, the Terada family came from Omi province around the time of the Onin War and has been in existence for 500 years. The truth seems to be that Kotaro Terada, a member of this family, has donated his collection to the art gallery, which he purchased with funds obtained by donating land to Opera City. This episode reminds me that there are rich people with a long history even if they do not appear in the media.

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