Day 10/11 — Kanazawa and Karuizawa

After saying goodbye to Kyoto, we cross over to northern art, by the Sea of Japan. For here lies Kanazawa, sister city of Ghent and since 2004 the location of SANAA’s 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. The architectural design breaks through the traditional layout of a museum by designing the various exhibition spaces as separate volumes and allowing the connections between them to flow freely. Visitors are challenged to explore through the fordable circular building.

The writer and scholar D.T. Suzuki was an authority on Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, and was instrumental in spreading interest in it to the West. We visit his museum, where architect Yoshio Taniguchi has sublimely materialised the principles of Zen in space, time and movement.

On the way back to Tokyo, we get off at Karuizawa, known as a holiday resort for Tokyo residents. A bus takes us to Ryue Nishizawa’s Hiroshi Senju Museum, where a magnificent synergy has been created between art, architecture and nature.