Suntory Museum of ArtTokyo Midtown, Roppongi

Masterpieces from the Itsuo Art Museum Collection: Buson, Go Shun, and the Art of Tea

Last day16 September 2026 – 8 November 2026¥1,700

First major Tokyo showing in ~30 years of the Itsuo Art Museum's collection, from classical calligraphy fragments and tea utensils to paintings by Yosa Buson and Matsumura Go Shun.

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On now All of November 2026

One tea bowl here is a Yuan-dynasty cup that broke and was patched with shards of another bowl. Kobayashi Ichizō, founder of the Hankyu railway and the Takarazuka Revue, liked the join so much he named it "Iemitsu-kō", after the shogun who also succeeded smoothly.

It's his collection, lent by the Itsuo Art Museum in Osaka. The route starts on the fourth floor with Heian calligraphy fragments, sutras, and Buson and his pupil Go Shun. You walk down to the third floor and the mood changes: tea caddies lacquered with sheet music, Gallé glass used for tea, and joke scrolls Kobayashi hung at his own tea gatherings. Bring the friend who thinks tea ceremony is all silence: one scroll is a pun on "what on earth is this?"

Works rotate: the first period ends 12 October, the second runs from 14 October. Adults pay ¥1,700 (¥1,500 in advance), junior-high and under free. Open until 20:00 on Fridays and 7 November, and until 21:00 on 31 October for Roppongi Art Night.

Look for

Go Shun's White Plum Blossoms screens
Look for the pair of six-panel screens in their own large, dimly lit room: plum branches spread across a pale blue ground that reads as night, shown for the whole run.
Buson's Narrow Road to the Deep North scrolls
Buson copied out all of Bashō's travel diary by hand and drew 15 scenes with loose, simple figures; the scenes change through the run so the whole work gets shown.
The "Iemitsu-kō" tea bowl
Look closely at the Yuan-dynasty bowl to see where shards of a different bowl were fitted in to mend it, the join Kobayashi named after a shogun.
The sheet-music tea caddies
A black lacquer caddy carries a Takarazuka song Kobayashi wrote, in gold notation round the lid, beside a red one with the score of Kimigayo.
Rosanjin's grape water jar
A Ming blue-and-white jar painted inside and out with heavy bunches of grapes, once owned by Kitaōji Rosanjin.