Located in the picturesque Shigaraki Mountains, near the ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto, the Miho Museum appears to the viewer as a fairy-tale palace after the mountain serpentine road that rises up from the lake. Biwa.

The museum was founded in 1997 by Koyama Mihoko, after whom it was named. Koyama Mihoko was based on the philosophical teaching of Okada Mokichi, who believed that enjoying the beautiful makes a person better, cleanses him from spiritual and physical suffering. That's why she decided to put her rare collection of art objects on public display. The idea was to combine the harmony of beautiful products of human hands with the harmony of nature. Therefore, it was not the city of Kyoto that was chosen for the museum, but the Shigaraki Mountains, where Emperor Shōmu (724-749) tried to move his capital from Nara in 742.

The museum project was commissioned by one of the world's leading architects, Chinese-American Yong Ming Pei, creator of the Louvre's glass pyramid and the east wing of the Washington National Gallery. Pei, who has repeatedly called the museum his favorite creation, embodied in his project an ancient legend conveyed by the poet Tao Yuanming in the poem about "Peach Valley". The poem tells about a fisherman who suddenly saw a peach tree among the rocks on the river. The fisherman was very surprised: where could it come from here? He swam closer and found the cave entrance next to the tree. After passing through the cave, the fisherman came to a valley full of beautiful trees, fertile fields and friendly and happy inhabitants. The surprised fisherman decided to return home and tell his fellow villagers about this paradisiacal place. But no matter how much he and other people searched for it later, no one could find this heavenly valley.

Architect Pei dug a slightly curved tunnel through one of the mountains and connected the two valleys with a light steel bridge structure. The museum building itself is hidden inside a mountain that has been excavated and re-built, and from the outside you can only see openwork glass structures that flood the building with light, surrounded by beautiful trees. Soft and warm walls and floors of the building are made of light yellow limestone imported from France, filled with the light of the sun and moon through the glass roof structures. The complex includes both a traditional Japanese rock garden and cherry and red maple alleys, which change the museum's appearance depending on the season. By an amazing coincidence, the place where the museum was built has been called "Momodani" ("Peach Valley") since ancient times.

Koyama's collection began with items for the tea ceremony, paintings of traditional Japanese and Chinese paintings, and scrolls of calligraphy that decorated the tea room. Gradually, the collection grew out of the tea room and went far beyond the boundaries of Japanese art, including masterpieces of world art. Unlike the Japanese collection (its masterpieces are displayed in the north wing of the museum), the world art collection (south wing) is limited (with some exceptions) to objects of ancient and early medieval civilizations of the world - Egypt, Near Asia, Iran, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, Tibet, China, Korea, Ancient America, Greece and Rome.

The museum's Egyptian collection includes a number of rare items from the Ancient Kingdom (XXVIII-XXIII centuries BC), highly artistic stone and bronze sculptures, and early glass samples. I would like to mention the 168 cm high wooden sculpture of Nakht, which dates back to the 20th century BC and is currently the largest wooden Egyptian sculpture of this size from such an early time, as well as the statuette of a seated deity with the head of a falcon (presumably Horus), made of silver, decorated with gold and lapis lazuli, description and even the dimensions of which coincide with the description of sacred figurines

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deities from the farthest (most sacred) part of the temples in Egyptian papyri (XIII century BC). This figure was also described in the diary of the famous American archaeologist Howard Carter (1873-1939) and is the rarest example of a sacred sculpture of this type, hidden from the eyes of the uninitiated.

The Front and Central Asian collection includes both early Mesopotamian plastic of the 3rd millennium BC, sculpture and plastic from the Bactrian-Margian region (Afghanistan-south of Central Asia) of the same time, reliefs from the royal palaces of Nimrud and Persepolis. The discovery of a relief from the palace of Ashurnatsirapala II (883 - 859 BC) is associated with the name of another prominent English archaeologist, Austin Henry Layard (1822 -?). Magnificent collections of pre-Achaemenid gold and electrum vessels from western / southwestern Iran of the Middle Elamite period, ritual gold objects from the Oxus (Amu Darya), ritual vessels - ritons - from the Black Sea region to Bactria, early medieval Iranian silver and porcelain dishes with miniature images, etc. have become widely known. Undoubtedly, the Persian carpet of the Safavid period from the Shah's palace (XVI-XVII centuries) about six meters in length deserves attention.

The American collection includes stone sculpture of the ancient Olmecs (the civilization of the second half of the 2nd - first half of the 1st millennium BC in central Mexico), and objects of decorative and applied art of the Maya, and gold jewelry of ancient Peru, and fabrics from South America, which are about two thousand years old. It is impossible to describe all the collections of the museum and all the rare art objects from them, so the author limited himself to analyzing only some items from its part related to Southeast Asia, including Southern China, which is his specialty.

Detailed descriptions of the exhibits of the collections can be found in the catalogues issued by the museum. In addition to the extensive catalogues of the north and south wings and the festive catalog dedicated to the museum's 10th anniversary, it publishes detailed catalogues of special thematic exhibitions that are held twice or three times a year, combining exhibits from the museum's collections with items brought to the exhibition from Japan and other countries around the world. The main exhibits of the exhibitions are displayed on the museum's website, which is available in several languages, including Russian. In addition to the catalog, the scientific journal Bulletin of the Miho Museum is also published, which contains detailed studies of individual exhibits and groups of exhibits. The magazine publishes not only museum staff, but also world-leading experts from various universities and major museums in the world, including, for example, the State Hermitage Museum. The Xiumei Cultural Foundation, which manages the museum, also publishes the popular science magazine "Art of Xiumei", which tells, in particular, about the work of the Xiumei Prize winners in the field of arts. The museum participates in archaeological excavations, organizes international conferences and symposia, public lectures, and educational programs for children.

Even before the completion of the museum building, an exhibition of his collections called "The Xiumei Family Collection" was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and later exhibitions were held in Leiden, Vienna, the British Museum in London, the Los Angeles Museum and other famous museums around the world (mainly in the United States and Europe). In Russia, the museum has been cooperating with the State Hermitage Museum for many years, and maintains links with the State Museum of Oriental Art, as well as with other museums.

Among the pearls of the South-East Asian collection, we should mention a number of rare Bronze and Iron Age objects from what is now Southern China, which had different civilizations from the ancient proto-Chinese ethnic group. First of all, it is a bronze vessel-a figurine of a water buffalo, attributed to the XIII-XI centuries BC. There is only one other such vessel known in the world from the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The water buffalo is a sacred animal for the peoples of Southeast Asia, characteristic of the Bronze-Iron Age plastics of Cambodia (Snai), Yunnan (Shizhaishan culture) in the second half-end of the 1st millennium BC and some other cultures. Water buffalo sacrifices in cases that are particularly important for a given area (or even a state) (epidemics, wars) are also known in modern Cambodia. The water buffalo figurine from the Miho Museum's collection, which belongs to the northern region and much earlier period, is not only a rare example of ceremonial bronze in the Yangtze region, but also an important piece of evidence showing the cultural commonality of the Yangtze with the southern territories. Other items from the Bronze Age of the lower and Middle Yangtze include a bell without a tongue that was placed on the handle, a unique vase in the form of an elephant figurine dating from the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, etc.

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At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the state of Chu emerged, whose culture combined elements of local and Chinese culture. The Miho Museum has several rare objects of wooden sacred sculpture (apparently from burials). This is a wooden stand with antlers carved on it from wood, resembling deer (a funerary statuette of the Chu deity, known in the tombs of the aristocracy), a wooden drum stand in the shape of two birds (both belong to the middle of the 1st millennium BC). BC).

Among the objects of medieval art in the museum's collection, two bronze sculptures from Cambodia of the Angkor era (IX-XV centuries) should be noted, belonging to the periods of its greatest heyday-Angkor Wat and Bayon (XII-XIII centuries). The fact is that, although a huge number of stone sculptures and reliefs have come down from the Angkor era, bronze sculpture, in addition to small plastics, has been preserved in rare cases, which, in our opinion, can be explained by the long period of turmoil that swept Cambodia after the fall of Angkor, when the armies of Thais and Vietnamese invaded its territory. The metal was used for military purposes, but it also became easy prey for robbers. All the more valuable is the female figure of the Buddha, which has a height of about 80 cm, standing with outstretched arms and raised palms - "mudra (gesture) of fearlessness" (XII-XIII centuries). Of great interest is the figure of a sitting Buddha in a meditation pose (XII century) with a height of 90 cm, which consists of six (!) components that have been completely preserved. There is no such sculpture in either the National Museum of Cambodia or the French Guimet Museum, which has a good selection of Khmer bronzes.

The collections of the Miho Museum are of great importance not only for researchers from all over the world (among Russian scientists they were studied by such famous scientists as B. A. Litvinsky, B. I. Marshak, I. R. Pichikyan, A. I. Kosolapov, T. K. Mkrtychev), but also for ordinary visitors. As the French publicist Stephane Barberi told the author of these lines in 2007: "This is better than the Louvre. After all, you can see everything in the Louvre, but here I saw only exceptionally beautiful things." Ms. Koyama's idea was not only to collect masterpieces (which is not always possible, even if you have the means and knowledge), but also to show them to the audience in the most aesthetically attractive way. The best specialists who have studied these objects at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other leading museums of the world work on the arrangement, lighting, and design of the museum. After all, the enjoyment of beauty makes a person kinder. Despite all the difficulties of Russian-Japanese relations, the beauty offered by the museum is the key to mutual understanding and human contacts between our peoples.

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