Min-on Music Museum — Attraction in Tokyo

A very small museum with its unique interactive strength. It has many real, functioning automatic music playing boxes and pianos! I could not take photos but take a look at their website. I don’t know how they manage to find all these from all over the world. I never have seen an automatic playing piano with special paper rolls marked with unique music note marks. When the paper rolls get rolling, the piano automatically plays live music recorded almost a hundred years ago. They also collected made in 16xx to modern pianos, demonstrated by a real piano player. This will take you to a short music journey from Beethoven to Mozart to modern piano players, a passage from delicate sounding to powerful modern sound. These two elements are the gems of this...

Entrance is free. The museum has a small exhibition of world wide instruments and the history of the museum. It has two interactive exhibitions that at the time were happening every 30 minutes or so. One of music boxes and other related automated pianos, vitrolas etc. And a interactive exhibition of pianos from different eras where the guide will play short pieces or excerpts of a piece of the era. Hearing Bach played in a harpsichord or Chopin played in a piano the same brand he owned was amazing, the guide really well. The guide spoke in Japanese but a little book is handed as well introducing the objects. I also went over to the guide and used translate to ask a couple questions and that...

This is an easily accessible museum telling the history of Western piano and music boxes since the Rennaisance using a guide to demonstrate everything, & leaflets in various languages are available. One room in the Museum shows some world folk instruments. And another room shows music as the common communication between countries since the Wars, & since the common shared media technology. As a musician from England I was disappointed that early Japanese music was excluded - aurally and visually. But the staff were friendly and helpful in alerting visitors to demonstration times etc, so I do recommend...