National Museum of Western art in Tokyo – one of a kind in all of Japan. The basis of a rich collection of paintings and sculptures was the private collection policies and businessman Matsukata Costero, who traveled extensively in Europe and bought works of art, mainly in Paris. His collection, situated in France, was confiscated during the Second World war, but part of it was later returned to Japan as a sign of reconciliation between French and Japanese peoples.

In 1957 in Ueno Park construction began on the Museum, whose building was designed by renowned French architect Le Corbusier. Two years later the Museum was opened, and after twenty years the disciple of Le Corbusier Kunio Maekawa has attached to it an additional room.

Today the Museum presents more than two thousand exhibits, the authors are the most eminent painters and sculptors of Europe and North America, who lived in the period from the middle ages to the twentieth century.

The first floor of the Museum is devoted to the painters who worked in 15-18 centuries – including Italian masters, Tintoretto, Veronese, Flemish Rubens and van Dyck, representatives of German, French and Spanish schools of painting. In the new Museum building, built in 1979, stored paintings, Dating from the second half of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. Among them are paintings of the French Impressionists (Renoir, Cezanne, van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin) and the Italian futurists and the English pre-Raphaelites. Drawing exhibition of the Museum presents the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Durer and others. In addition, the Museum in Tokyo has the most complete collection of works by Rodin, which includes 58 sculptures, including the famous work "the Thinker", "the burghers of Calais" and "the Gates of Hell".