Museum of Musical Instruments

The official app of "Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments".
You can watch thematic exhibitions that can be seen only here,and you can watch "museum view"(powered by Google Art Project).

【About Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments】
The Hamamatsu Museum of Musical Instruments was established in April 1995 by the City of Hamamatsu, as a part of the project of making Hamamatsu the city of music and culture. Being one of the biggest musical instruments museum in the world, it holds 3300 items, 1300 of which are displayed.

The City of Hamamatsu is situated between Tokyo and Osaka, with the population of about 800,000. Major industries are agriculture, musical instruments, motorcycles and small cars. Especially musical instruments industry, or piano and wind instruments, is the world’s largest and high leveled.

The history of musical instruments making goes back 125 years. But the city had been just the city of producting them, not the city of music. So, in 1980’s the government started the project “The City of Music and Culture”. The construction of concert halls, international piano competition, citizens concerts and many musical events were started. In addition, the city decided to make the first municipal musical instruments museum in Japan, as a symbol of musical-instrument-making-city.

Although the musical instruments industry of Hamamatsu is that of western musical instruments, especially piano, the museum was not planned to be a piano museum but to be a museum where all kinds of musical instruments are collected and displayed to introduce to the people the history and variety of musical culture of the world, and of the man. We do not think the instruments of particular areas are superior to others. We do not think European instrument is the best, nor Japanese is the best. We do think each instrument, each culture has its own value. So both the complexed biggest organ and the simple bamboo flute, has the same value in the musical, cultural standpoint of view, not an economical standpoint.

This is our symbol message : By its shape and the materials from which it has been produced and from the way it creates sound and color of tone, a musical instrument and the music it brings forth speak eloquently for the sensibilities and aesthetic sense of the region and people it represents.