Tōno Municipal Museum (遠野市立博物館)

Quick Facts

Type

Museum

Prefecture

Iwate · Tōno

Nearest station

Tōno Station (JR Kamaishi Line)

From the station

About ten minutes on foot

English signage

some

Opening hours and admission

See the official site · information checked on 2026-11-03

Hours, admission and closing days change, and this site does not list them. The link goes to the place's own page, with the date we last checked it.

What is there

The museum stands beside the town library a few minutes from Tōno station, and it was built in 1980 as the first museum in Japan given entirely to folklore. Its rooms follow the life of the basin through the year, the farms, the horses, the fairs and the beliefs, and set the tales of 1910 beside the objects they mention: the paired oshira-sama figures, the household gods, the fishing gear and the hearths. A small theatre shows the tales as animated films, and the manuscript of the book is in the collection. The museum is the indoor half of a Tōno visit; Denshōen and Kappa-buchi, in the countryside to the east, are the outdoor half.

Why here

Every creature of the 1910 collection passes through these rooms: the zashiki-warashi who leaves a house before its ruin, the red-faced kappa of the Sarugaishi river, the mountain women met by hunters, the tengu of the high peaks. The museum does not add to the tales; it shows what the people who told them owned and feared, which is the best gloss on them.

Yokai you will meet

Zashiki-warashi 座敷童子 — The house spirit of the 1910 tales, with the houses it was said to leave.
Kappa 河童 — The red-faced kappa of the Tōno rivers, in the tales and in the fishing gear of the rooms.
Yamauba 山姥 — The mountain women met by hunters in the tales of the Tōno hills.
Tengu 天狗 — The tengu of the high peaks around the basin, as the tales tell them.

In manga: Tono Monogatari

Getting there

Tōno Station (JR Kamaishi Line). About ten minutes on foot.

Sources and further reading

Reliable secondary Tōno Municipal Museum Tōno Tourism Association (Tōno Jikan) Visiting information and access for the museum beside the town library.

Database Tōno Municipal Museum (遠野市立博物館) Wikipedia (Japanese) Opened 1980 as the first folklore museum in Japan; the exhibits on Tōno Monogatari and the manuscript.

Primary text Tōno Monogatari (遠野物語) Yanagita Kunio (1910); Aozora Bunko edition Tale 17 records a spirit of old Tōno houses often seen as a child of about twelve or thirteen, sounds in an empty room, and prosperity tied to the spirit's presence.

Other places with these yokai

Tōno Folktale Museum とおの物語の館 Museum Tōno, Iwate — Zashiki-warashi, Kappa, Yamauba, Tengu

Denshōen 伝承園 Museum Tōno, Iwate — Zashiki-warashi, Kappa

Fukusaki: Yanagita Kunio's Birthplace and the Yokai Benches 福崎町（柳田國男・松岡家記念館と妖怪ベンチ） Site Fukusaki, Hyōgo — Kappa, Tengu

Mizuki Shigeru Road 水木しげるロード Street Sakaiminato, Tottori — Kappa, Tengu

Yokai Yashiki at Ōboke 妖怪屋敷と石の博物館（道の駅大歩危） Museum Miyoshi (Yamashiro), Tokushima — Yamauba, Tengu

Kappa-buchi and Jōkenji カッパ淵と常堅寺 Site Tōno, Iwate — Kappa

Ryokufusō, the Inn of the Zashiki-warashi 緑風荘（座敷わらしの宿） Site Ninohe (Kindaichi Onsen), Iwate — Zashiki-warashi

Kashōzan Mirokuji 迦葉山弥勒寺 Shrine or temple Numata, Gunma — Tengu

Takaosan Yakuōin 高尾山薬王院 Shrine or temple Hachiōji, Tokyo — Tengu

Daiyūzan Saijōji 大雄山最乗寺 Shrine or temple Minamiashigara, Kanagawa — Tengu

Kinasa Folk Museum and the Demon Woman Momiji 鬼無里ふるさと資料館と鬼女紅葉の里 Museum Nagano (Kinasa), Nagano — Yamauba

Kurama-dera 鞍馬寺 Shrine or temple Kyoto (Sakyō), Kyoto — Tengu

Yokai Art Museum, Shōdoshima 妖怪美術館（小豆島） Museum Tonoshō, Shōdoshima, Kagawa — Kappa

Tanushimaru Station, the Kappa Station 田主丸駅（河童駅舎） Site Kurume (Tanushimaru), Fukuoka — Kappa

Kurume Suitengū 久留米水天宮（全国総本宮） Shrine or temple Kurume, Fukuoka — Kappa

The Kappa Landing Stone at Yatsushiro 河童渡来之碑（徳渕の津） Site Yatsushiro, Kumamoto — Kappa

Other places in Iwate

Kappa-buchi and Jōkenji カッパ淵と常堅寺 Site Tōno, Iwate — A quiet pool on a stream behind a temple in Tōno, the place the town points to when it tells its kappa tales.

Denshōen 伝承園 Museum Tōno, Iwate — A folk park built around an old L-shaped farmhouse, with a hall of a thousand silkworm deities and a room for the storyteller whose tales became Tōno Monogatari.

Mitsuishi Shrine and the Oni's Handprints 三ツ石神社（鬼の手形） Shrine or temple Morioka, Iwate — Three granite boulders in a city grove where an oni pressed its hands into the rock as an oath, and gave the prefecture its name.

Tōno Folktale Museum とおの物語の館 Museum Tōno, Iwate — A sake storehouse turned into a hall of tales, with the inn where the folklorist stayed and a stage where storytellers tell the tales in the dialect they were told in.

Ryokufusō, the Inn of the Zashiki-warashi 緑風荘（座敷わらしの宿） Site Ninohe (Kindaichi Onsen), Iwate — A hot-spring inn at the far end of a small spa village, where a house spirit called Kamemaro is said to have lived in the inner room for six hundred years.