The Saitama City Iwatsuki Ningyo Museum Collection
The Saitama City Iwatsuki Ningyo Museum Collection
The core of the museum’s holdings consists of the collection built by Nishizawa Tekiho and other collectors and ningyo donated by people in Saitama and throughout the country.
The Nishizawa Tekiho Collection
Nishizawa Tekiho (1889-1965; real name Nishizawa Koichi) was a Nihonga (modern Japanese-style) painter who was also a dedicated collector, researcher, and popularizer of ningyo and toys. He served as a specialist council member on the Special Council for Preserving Important Intangible Cultural Properties and was the first chairman of the Japan Kogei Association. He made significant contributions to promoting ningyo culture and the arts.
Tekiho’s father-in-law, Nishizawa Senko, was a leading lover of ningyo in the Meiji period. Thus, the Nishizawa family collection’s history covers nearly eighty years. Senko’s collection was donated to the Tokyo Imperial Museum (now the Tokyo National Museum) and other institutions. Tekiho, however, displayed most of the works he collected in his home and research center in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo. After his death, they were displayed in the Tekiho Memorial Ningyo Museum of Art in Ogose, Saitama Prefecture, which was managed by his heirs. In 2006, the collection was acquired by the city of Saitama through a donation from the Iwatsuki Ningyo Cooperative, and those approximately 3,500 works joined our museum’s collection.
The Tekiho collection is focused on classic Japanese ningyo but covers a wide range of genres, including folk toys and ningyo from throughout the world. The many artistically excellent works in it made the collection especially attractive.
Portrait of Nishizawa Tekiho (at his home and research center)
The Asahara Kakuyo Collection
This collection consists of about 800 ningyo that entrepreneur Asahara Kakuyo had acquired. Asahara Kakuyo built a superb collection, including gosho ningyo, Ichimatsu ningyo, and others with strikingly gorgeous costumes as well as many small, detailed works such as kamo ningyo and keue ningyo. The collection also included some works from other valuable collections, including the Nishizawa Tekiho collection and the former collection of Eloise M. Thomas, an American.
Other donated materials
The museum has received donations of ningyo handed down in old-established families in Saitama, Tokyo, and many other places in Japan. Among them are about 600 hina ningyo and collectible toys donated by the Amano family, a wealth merchant family in Nihombashi, Tokyo.
