Ohara Museum of Art

Opened in 1930 in the canal town of Kurashiki, this was Japan's first museum of Western art, founded by industrialist Magosaburo Ohara around works gathered by a painter friend in Europe. Its neoclassical main hall holds paintings by El Greco, Monet, Gauguin and Matisse alongside later additions of Japanese and East Asian art. The columned facade and adjoining galleries sit within the town's picturesque preserved merchant quarter. The improbable presence of European masters in a provincial town remains its enduring appeal.