National Crafts Museum (Japan)

The National Crafts Museum (国立工芸館) is a museum of Japanese crafts in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. Still retaining the more formal, official designation National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo Craft Gallery (東京国立近代美術館工芸館), it forms part of the Independent Administrative Institution National Museum of Art (ja). As part of the government policy of regional revitalization, the facility relocated in 2020 from Kitanomaru Park in Tokyo, where it first opened in 1977. It is now housed in two Western-style buildings of the Meiji period that have themselves been relocated from elsewhere in Kanazawa, reassembled, and restored, the 1898 Old 9th Division Command Headquarters and 1909 Old Army Generals Club. From the collection of some 3,800 items, by craftsmen from all over Japan, some 1,900 have been transferred, including approximately 1,400 by "holders" and preservers of Important Intangible Cultural Properties, who are often referred to as "Living National Treasures", and members of the Japan Art Academy.