Family Treasure Trove
As one of Japan’s most important feudal families for many centuries, the Mohri clan accumulated many treasures. The Mohri Museum has a collection of some 20,000 items, which are displayed in a series of rotating exhibitions throughout the year.
Although most famous for its four National Treasures, the museum contains many other interesting and valuable pieces. For instance, there is a famous letter written to his three sons by Mohri Motonari, the sixteenth-century daimyo under whom the clan achieved its greatest power. In the letter, Motonari advises the three of them to act in unison because “one arrow by itself can be broken, but three arrows bound tightly together cannot.”
The collection also includes a wealth of historically important documents from the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the shogunate fell into decline and eventually made way for restored imperial rule.