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Nakaoka Shintaro Museum

Nakaoka ShintaroKitagawaBakumatsuSatsuma-Choshu alliancemuseum

Kochi · Kitagawa

33.4669°N, 134.0689°E

Sakamoto Ryoma is on every poster in Kochi. Nakaoka Shintaro, who brokered the Satsuma-Choshu alliance alongside him and was assassinated with him in the same room in Kyoto in 1867, gets a museum in the mountain village he came from and very little else. He was a village headman's son from Kitagawa, forty kilometres up the coast from Kochi city, and he left it at twenty-two.

The museum is run by the village and covers his life in detail — the political work, the alliance, the Rikuentai militia he formed, the killing. His restored birthplace stands nearby. It is a small, serious, municipal museum about a figure who is genuinely important and is permanently in someone else's shadow, in a village of two thousand people that also happens to contain a large Monet-themed garden.

Essential Information

Opening Hours

9:00 AM – 4:30 PM

Closed: Closed Tuesdays, or the following day when the Tuesday is a holiday | 28 December – 2 January

Entrance Fee

¥500 general | ¥300 elementary and junior high school students | Group rates ¥400 and ¥200

Best Season

Year-round | Indoor museum

Visit Duration

60 minutes

Getting There

Access Information

140 Kashiwagi, Kitagawa, Aki District. Car recommended; up the Nahari river valley from the coast in eastern Kochi. Open 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM. Closed Tuesdays, or the following day when the Tuesday is a holiday, and 28 December – 2 January. Admission ¥500 general and ¥300 for elementary and junior high school students, with group rates of ¥400 and ¥200.

Insider Guide

Premium

**Closed Tuesdays.** Not Mondays, which is what most people assume. With a holiday shift. **See the birthplace too.** His restored house stands near the museum and is part of the same visit. **Read about the Satsuma-Choshu alliance first.** Nakaoka's significance is entirely in the political brokering of 1866, and the museum assumes you know why that mattered. **Combine with Monet's Garden.** The village also has a large Monet-themed garden, which is a strange thing to find in the same valley and is the reason most visitors come to Kitagawa at all. **The Gomen-Nahari line reaches the coast.** From Nahari it is a drive up the valley. Without a car this is difficult.

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