Anthropology will exhibit more than 100 pieces of Japanese culture

A temporary exhibition, carried out in collaboration with the National Museum of Tokyo, will arrive in 2026 at the National Museum of Anthropology (MNA) with around 120 pieces from the most important cultural venue in the Asian country.

In interview with The Daythe director of international exhibitions and curatorial planning of the Japanese venue, Yoshiya Shinagawa, explained the conditions under which this project came to fruition, in addition to the specifications of the relics that make it up.

“We are very excited because with Mexico we have established a very close dialogue on collaborations with its different museums. This new exhibition is put together to dialogue with another that was held at the Tokyo National Museum in 2023 and 2024, and which was titled Ancient Mexico: Mayans, Aztecs and Teotihuacanswhich had a great response from the Japanese public; We registered more than 300 thousand visitors. It was one of the most successful in the history of this museum,” he commented.

This new exhibition was organized by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), in conjunction with the Japanese embassy and the Japan Foundation in Mexico: “The INAH has given us access to the MNA, an emblematic venue for Mexican culture and we are very proud that our pieces can be exhibited in such an internationally recognized venue, which has even been the winner of the Princess of Asturias Award,” said Yoshiya Shinagawa.

ancient pieces

On display will be pieces ranging from ancient ceramics from the Jōmon period (the oldest in Japanese history, dating from 14,500 to 300 BC), funerary effigies, Buddhist statues from the 9th century, clothing and kimonos from the 18th century, and samurai armor from the Edo era in the 19th century, to contemporary art vases created with ancient techniques in 1990.

“We want the Mexican public to know more about our history as a nation. We know that currently there is a very important interest in the culture of our country thanks to the wide dissemination of our manga and anime. That is why we consider it very important to explain the process from which the Japanese people built their society, in order to further strengthen our proximity to Mexico,” commented the expert.

Preservation culture

Most of the pieces in the Tokyo National Museum are donations made by the imperial family, who inherited a great cultural treasure from the Tokugawa clan. Some of the objects are so old that they require constant restoration to maintain their paint and shape.

“We have a tradition of preserving our art, that was very useful because it allowed us to understand our past, and it is something in which we can help Mexico, in order to understand how societies responded to the passage of time. There is a lot to learn as institutions and we can share our knowledge with the venues of Mexico,” he assured.

“A special part is our organization as cultural venues, we have several located in specific cities and towns that allow us to collect artifacts from these areas, and have greater precision when recording the history of a region.

“So far we have planned that this exhibition will consist of six parts, because we consider that it is very important to define the events with which Japanese society changed: it will begin with the Jōmon period; we advance to the arrival of Buddhism in the 9th century, which changed the religious landscape and which today coexists with Shinto traditions; then there is the arrival of the shogunates and the civil war; later we advance to the period of peace and then the forced opening generated by contact with the United States and the powers European, to conclude with the contemporary,” concluded the curator.

The exhibition, whose title has yet to be defined, will open its doors in November 2026 at the National Museum of Anthropology (Paseo de la Reforma y Calzada Gandhi s/n, Chapultepec Polanco neighborhood, Miguel Hidalgo mayor’s office, Mexico City).