Information
Welcome to the Explosive Space!
The Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum was both home and studio to Taro Okamoto until his death in 1996 at the age of 84. It was here that he lived for almost fifty years from 1954.
It is the place where he painted, dictated manuscripts, struggled with sculpture, met with people, and developed his ideas for a variety of works, including the ‘Tower of the Sun’ for the Osaka World EXPO ‘70 and other huge monumental works or murals. Even today it remains filled with his dynamic energy.
Furthermore, the address of this place used to be 3 Aoyama-Takagicho, which had been that of the prewar home of Ippei, Kanoko and Taro Okamoto. It was where the family lived for years before setting off for Europe, but unfortunately the original family home was destroyed in the bombings.
After the war, Taro’s friend Junzo Sakakura designed and built this studio on the site. Sakakura had been a favorite pupil of the French architect, Le Corbusier, and in answer to Taro’s request he built the walls of concrete blocks, capping these with a convex, lens-shaped roof to create a unique building. At the time it attracted great attention as a famous piece of architecture.
Taro Okamoto’s work is so varied that it seems impossible that it could all have been made by a single artist, but it was all conceived here. It contains huge drawings and sketches, sculptures, and a mountain of reference materials tracing the history of postwar culture that we reorganize every now and then and we hope that you will drop by to see it sometime.
Opening Hours & Price
| Opening Hours | 10:00-18:00 (final admission 17:30) |
| Closed | Tuesdays (except for national holidays) ※Also closed during the year-end holiday (28 Dec-4 Jan) and on maintenance days |
| Admission Fee | General ￥650（￥550） Elementary School Children ￥300（￥200） ※( ) Figures in parenthesis indicate discount rate for groups of over 15 people |
Facilities
The museum does not provide parking space.
Please remove shoes when entering the building.
Please do not bring large luggage. We don’t have locker.
Access
Tokyo Metro (Chiyoda, Ginza, Hanzomon lines)
8 minutes walk from Omotesando Station
Toei Bus (route 88 for Shinbashi Station North Exit or Shibuya Station)
2 minutes walk from ‘Minami Aoyama 6 chome’ bus stop (buses for Shinbashi Station North Exit or Shibuya Station).
Map
6-1-19, Minami-Aoyama, Minato Ku, Tokyo 107-0062
TEL：03-3406-0801