Exhibition

Yokusai Museum

Ogaki was home to Japan's "Da Vinci", Iinuma Yokusai, and here we introduce his botanical research and skilled paintings.
He was a doctor, scientist, and artist who lived around the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. He made a name for himself in Ogaki as a doctor of Western medicine, and pursued the newest methods, using Sugita Genpaku's book of anatomy to perform human autopsy. In his later years, he became absorbed in botany and produced many beautiful plant paintings. He also created a collection of plant drawings, based on the classification system of Carl Von Linné (17th century natural history scholar, Sweden), and his work was highly regarded abroad. In his late years, he also dabbled in photo research.
In the Yokusai Museum, we display illustrations from his collection and demistify Yokusai himself, as well as his reseach, an early example of combining art with science.

Director Keiichi Irie