Sumida Hokusai Museum

The Sumida Hokusai Museum celebrates the life and boundless imagination of Katsushika Hokusai, the Edo-period woodblock master whose print The Great Wave off Kanagawa is among the most recognisable images ever made. Fittingly, the museum stands in Sumida, the very district where Hokusai was born around 1760 and where he lived and worked for most of his ninety years, moving house, legend says, more than ninety times. Opened in 2016, it is a small but exquisitely designed institution that lets you get closer to this restless genius than almost anywhere else.

The building itself announces the encounter with art: a crisp, faceted structure clad in mirror-finish aluminium, designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kazuyo Sejima of the firm SANAA, its angular slits framing glimpses of the surrounding streets. Inside, the compact permanent gallery on the fourth floor traces Hokusai's astonishing career in themed sections, from his early commercial prints through his landscapes, his manga sketchbooks, his ghostly and mythological images, and the astonishing burst of masterpieces he produced in his seventies and beyond. Because original ukiyo-e prints are light-sensitive and fragile, many exhibits are high-resolution facsimiles, but this comes with a gift: interactive touchscreen tablets let you zoom into any work in microscopic detail, revealing brushwork and printing subtleties invisible to the naked eye in a normal gallery. A charming life-size diorama recreates Hokusai's famously chaotic studio, with animatronic figures of the aged artist and his daughter Oi at work.

The museum's collection includes genuine original prints, drawings and rare printed books, rotated through special exhibitions on the upper floor that explore particular themes, series or relationships in Hokusai's output. Seeing The Great Wave and the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series in the context of the artist's whole life, and in the neighbourhood that shaped him, gives these familiar images a fresh and moving depth.

The visiting experience is calm, modern and refreshingly quick; the core displays can be savoured in a little over an hour, making the museum an easy addition to a day in Ryogoku. It is fully wheelchair accessible with lifts, the interactive stations and captions are bilingual, and there is a small but tempting shop for prints and stationery. The surrounding area is the historic home of sumo, so a visit pairs perfectly with the nearby Ryogoku Kokugikan arena and the Edo-era atmosphere of the old town.

Because it is entirely indoors, the museum suits any season and makes a fine wet-weather choice. Weekday mornings are quietest. General admission to the permanent gallery is very inexpensive, with special exhibitions ticketed separately. Getting there is simple: from JR Ryogoku Station on the Sobu Line, covered by the Japan Rail Pass, it is a seven-minute walk, while the Toei Oedo Line's Ryogoku Station is even closer. The mirrored building beside a small neighbourhood park is easy to spot, a shard of the future honouring a titan of the past.