Ishikawa Prefecture Kanazawa Port Ohno Karakuri Memorial Museum

This museum honors the achievements of Ohno Benkichi, an inventor and science and technology engineer active in the late Edo period (mid-19th century), and promotes the theme “See, Touch, and Enjoy.”

The exhibition rooms are divided into seven areas. In addition to karakuri puppet demonstrations held four times a day, the museum also features a corner introducing the history and appeal of karakuri and a hands-on building for kids lined with many wooden toy creations.

In particular, the exhibition room where you can learn about Ohno Benkichi’s techniques comes highly recommended. The museum collects and displays Approx. 100 items, including karakuri puppets long loved by the Japanese since the Edo period and karakuri works you can actually operate and enjoy, and introduces the techniques with easy-to-follow explanations.

Standout works include “Kotekifujido” in which a doll beats a hand drum and plays a flute using complex mechanisms, “Hidakagawa Irisoi Kao Kiyohime Kabuki” in which a beautiful girl’s face suddenly transforms into a demon-like face when a mechanism thread is pulled, and the “Tea-Serving Doll,” which uses whale baleen and applies the structure of mechanical clocks—each especially worth seeing.