Treasure Museum (Homotsukan)
The bronze-roofed Treasure Museum houses many precious objects associated with Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) and has attracted the attention of architectural historians as an outstanding example of early twentieth-century architecture. It is located just south of the main shrine buildings and was one of the first privately operated museums in Japan.
Many of the magnificent treasures stored within the museum were donated in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century after the shrine was revived, with private owners passing over items that were closely associated with Hideyoshi or that had originally belonged to the shrine.
The building was designed by the prominent architect Takeda Goichi (1872–1938), a friend of Frank Lloyd Wright, and was opened in December 1925. The structure was designed to resemble the Japanese architectural style of Hideyoshi’s Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568–1603), yet it is made of reinforced concrete, a construction technique that was at the cutting edge of architectural design in the early twentieth century.