Ryukoku Museum: Buddhist art and Buddhist culture Museum

Highlight

At the Bezeklik Cave Temples Restoration Exhibit, experience what it would have been like to walk through a cave temple’s corridors.

Buddhism from its Birth to Today

The Ryukoku Museum is a comprehensive Buddhist museum that was opened to mark the 370th anniversary of Ryukoku University’s founding. It holds and exhibits precious cultural assets and academic materials primarily related to Buddhism.
Concept exhibitions present in an easy-to-understand fashion how Buddhism, after emerging approximately twenty-five hundred years ago in India, spread throughout Asian countries, was transmitted to Japan in the sixth century, and subsequently developed. Special and focus exhibitions use themes to examine Buddhism from a variety of angles and share the results of academic surveys and research with the general public.
On the second floor are life-size recreated murals from the walls of the Bezeklik Cave Temple’s Cave 15, which is located on the outskirts of Turpan in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. On the third floor is a museum theater where visitors can enjoy original movies regarding exhibition content and Buddhism.
The museum also features a cafe and shop.