Miho Museum

The Miho Museum is located southeast of Kyoto, Japan, near the town of Shigaraki, in Shiga Prefecture. The museum was the dream of Mihoko Koyama (after whom it is named), the heiress to the Toyobo textile business, and one of the wealthiest women in Japan. In 1970 Koyama founded the Shinji Shumeikai spiritual movement which is now said to have some 300,000 members worldwide. Furthermore, in the 1990s Koyama commissioned the museum to be built close to the Shumei temple in the Shiga mountains. The Miho Museum houses Mihoko Koyama's private collection of Asian and Western antiques, as well as other pieces with an estimated value of between US$300 million to US$1 billion, bought on the world market by the Shumei organisation in the years...