The Sumida Hokusai Museum — Attraction in Tokyo

Please read my review before you decide to go to this so-called museum. At the ticket office they will try their best to sell you a combined ticket for the permanent and temporary exhibition, which costs 1500 yen, instead of 400 yen for the permanent exhibition. So the museum is absolutely not worth the money, whether it’s a permanent exhibition or a temporary one. For this money you will be shown several printed books from the late 19th century, many works by students and followers, but very few works by Hokusai himself, including a print of the great wave, so actively used by the museum for marketing. At the temporary exhibition, everything is even worse; instead of most of the works you will get “large scale high resolution replicas”, the meaning of which is absolutely incomprehensible for being in the museum. If you're hoping to see 36 views of Mount Fuji, don't get your hopes up as the museum only has 1 image and that's in replica format. The remaining 35 will be kindly offered to you to view on the tablet nearby. To summarize, if you are from Europe, the USA or Russia or have been and understand what good and quality museums are, then don’t even waste time traveling and money on a ticket to this obviously...

Loved visiting this museum. So much information on Hokusai as well as displays of his work. Fascinating gallery full of information about how his work was produced, printed and published. This included his sketchbooks and the manuals he produced on how to draw, as well as so many examples of his illustrations in different publications.

The special exhibition on 'Scenery on both sides of the Sumida River' was also excellent. His work depicting daily life and views is phenomenal. We also enjoyed the displays of reproductions of his most famous works.

Whilst most of the work displayed is 'high quality reproductions' of the originals, we are thankful that the museum is keeping the originals safe.

We spent about 90 minutes in the museum. Absolutely worth the 1000 yen to access all exhibitions. We've enjoyed looking images of his works for years in the UK. To actually see some of the originals in the place where he was born and worked is such a privilege.

Our only groan is that the shop space is too small! It was rammed today. It's nice to buy a Hokusai souvenir from the place that displays his works, so a bigger shop with more space and more items...

A really interesting exhibition all about Hokusai's history as an artist. The entry for the museum is 700 yen for the permanent exhibit or 1000 which includes the temporary exhibit as well. Interestingly you get a discount if it's your birthday month! The exhibits are across two floors and I spent about 2 hours looking across everything.

The exhibitions were very interactive with touch screens, videos and even games and opportunities to draw on some of the tablets in Hokusai's style. It was a great balance of technology with the history of Hokusai's art

I learnt a lot about not only his wood block art but also his sketches and other art works which I hadn't heard of before as well as a comprehensive overview of his influence in Japan, where he'd lived, his family life and his life alongside the art.

Overall, well worth a visit for the price and you can easily spend 2-3 hours here going around and exploring. I went at about 3pm and it wasn't too busy. Some of the rooms were a bit light on English translations but this didn't detract from the experience - highly recommend if you're a fan of any of...