Tsushima Museum

In detail

The Tsushima Museum in Izuhara offers an overview of the island’s history from the Jomon period (10,000–300 BCE) to contemporary times. Exhibits focus particularly on the process and results of interaction between Tsushima and mainland Asia, covering themes such as ancient trade, conflict and reconciliation, and diplomacy between Japan and Korea during the Edo period (1603–1867).

The chronological permanent exhibition begins with a brief introductory section centered on a late seventeenth-century map of the island. This is followed by the Ancient Times room. Its distinctive display cases allow visitors to study artifacts such as earthenware fragments, arrowheads, axe blades, and decorative glass beads from all sides. Some reproductions of the items can be touched, including ceremonial bronze spearheads (hoko) thought to have been used in rituals in the first and second centuries.

Highlighted in the Feudal Japan and Edo Period rooms are artifacts and events from the fourteenth century up until 1867. Exhibits encompass Korean pottery acquired by Tsushima’s traders, documents describing the island’s commercial relations, and the official seals and correspondence forged by the So family, the daimyo lords of Tsushima. These fakes were produced for the purpose of reestablishing trade and diplomatic ties between the Tokugawa shogunate and Joseon Korea in the early 1600s.

On the second floor of the museum building is the Nagasaki Prefectural Research Center for the History of Tsushima. The Center is charged with preserving, restoring, and conducting research into documents from the official library of the So family, who were noted for their meticulous recordkeeping. The trove of some 80,000 items covers the entire Edo period and includes the So Mainichiki, a diary-like record of events on Tsushima kept by the domain’s scriveners that provides historians with a window onto centuries of life on the island.