The Sumida Hokusai Museum to Continue Growing while Sending Out Information on Hokusai to the Local Community and the World
Katsushika Hokusai, a world-renowned ukiyo-e artist, was born in Honjo-Wari-Gesui (presently the Kamezawa area in Sumida Ward, Tokyo) in 1760 and spent almost the entire 90 years of his life in Sumida Ward where he created a large number of masterpieces.
The museum has been planned to blend in with the park and the locality to make it easy for people to drop in for a visit. Instead of consisting of just one building, the slits provide gentle divisions to help the outer façade blend in well with the scale of the surrounding downtown district.The gentle slits in the overall structure represent an approach to the first-floor area and are connected to outside walkways. A sense of having a “front” and a “back” has been avoided to enable access from all points in the surrounding area.