“Kosetsu” is a sobriquet of Murayama Ryohei, the collector of the majority of objects in the museum.
Murayama was born in 1850 in present-day Mie Prefecture. He founded the Asahi Shimbun at age 28 and developed it into one of Japan’s leading daily newspapers. He also had a deep appreciation of art and helped manage Kokka, an art periodical founded by Okakura Tenshin. After Japan’s opening to the outside world, many precious works of art began to be taken out of the country, and Murayama put his energies into creating his own collection as a means of stemming the tide.
After Murayama’s death, there were calls to create a museum from his collection in view of its great academic and artistic value, and in 1972 the Kosetsu Museum of Art was established. The museum has been open to the public since the following year in Kobe’s Mikage district: The Museum preserves, and conducts research relating to, art objects as well as the Former Murayama Residence, which has been designated as an Important Cultural Property of Japan, and offers a wide range of cultural experiences to the public, including the tea ceremony.The newly-opened Nakanoshima Kosetsu Museum of Art and Kosetsu Museum of Art as a whole will strengthen their activities to preserve and display these precious cultural assets for future generations.