ÿþ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html lang="zh-CN"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <title>Northern Culture Museum's Web Site, History</title> <link href="design/base.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> </head> <body> <div class="title"> <img src="../imgpic2/ncmbanner1.jpg" border="0" align="right" alt=""> <img src="../imgpic1/hyoudai2.gif" border="0" align="center" alt=""> </div> <div class="contents"> <div class="side"> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="outline.html">Outline</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en" style="background-color:#AAEECC"><div>History</div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="garden.html">The Garden</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="room.html">The sub-drawing room,The kitchen and hearth</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="sanrakutei.html">Tea Houses<br>Sanraku-tei House</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="shukokan.html">Shukokan and haiku poem</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="hours.html">Visiting hours and Museum Map</a></div></h4> <div class="hrbottom"><hr></div> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="../top.html">Japanese Page</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="../russian/index.html">Russian Page</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="../chinese/index.html">Chinese Page</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="../korean/index.html">Korean Page</a></div></h4> <h4 lang="en"><div><a href="index.html">Back to English page</a></div></h4> <div class="hrbottom"><hr></div> <p lang="en"> Northern Culture Museum<br> <br> post nunmber 950-0205<BR> 2-15-25 Somi<br> Konan-ward Niigata City<br> Niigata Pref.<br> Tel 025-385-2001<br> Fax 025-385-3929<br> <a href="mailto: ncm2006@vanilla.ocn.ne.jp"><img src="../imgpic2/xin.gif" border="0" alt="E-mail" valign="bottom">Email:<br> ncm2006@vanilla.ocn.ne.jp</a> </p> <center> <img src="../imgpic1/minkakouyou.jpg" border="0" alt=""><br> <br> <img src="../imgpic1/rouka2.jpg" border="0" alt=""> </center> <div class="hrbottom2"><hr></div> </div> <div class="main"> <h2 lang="en">History of Northern Culture Museum</h2> <br> <h3 lang="en">Ito Mansion and the Northern Culture Museum</h3> <p lang="en" style="text-indent:1em"> The Ito family was formerly one of the largest landowners in Japan. </p> <p lang="en" style="text-indent:1em"><img src="../imgpic1/shoumen2.jpg" border="0" alt="Earthen warehouse gate between the front yard and the middle yard"> Here in this quiet village on the Kambara Plain along the Agano River, Ito Mansion served as their home until 1946,when the Land Reform Act was officially proclaimed and the mansion and all of the valuable works of art they had collected were donated to the Northern Culture Museum, which was established in the same year. <img src="../imgpic1/yashiki.jpg" border="0" alt=""> Since then Museum has been in charge of the maintenance and exhibition of the property. </p><br> <br><br> <br> <br> <h3 lang="en">History</h3> <p lang="en" style="text-indent:1em"><img src="../imgpic1/joukuu2.jpg" border="0" alt="the yard between Drawing room and Living room"> According to the family tradition, the Ito family began as farmers in this village about the middle of the 18th century. After the Meiji Restoration the family is supposed to have emerged as major landowners. </p> <p lang="en" style="text-indent:1em"> While Japan was striving for modernization during the Meiji era, the family continued to increase their property holdings that consisted mainly of paddy land and forest. <img src="../imgpic1/kinenhi.jpg" border="0" alt="monument"> By the beginning of the Showa era (1920's), they had become one of the largest landholders in Japan, possessing about 1,370 hectares of paddy fields and more than 1,000 hectares of forest. In order to manage this vast property they employed 78 overseers who controlled no fewer than 2,800 tenants. The family also owned about 60 warehouses, which stored 1,800 tons of rice every autumn. </p> <table border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5" align="center"> <tbody> <tr> <td><a href="outline.html"><img src="../imgpic2/back.gif" border="0" alt="Back,Outline"></a></td> <td><a href="garden.html"><img src="../imgpic2/next.gif" border="0" alt="Next,The Garden"></a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <hr> <address lang="en">Copy Right Northern Culture Museum. All Rights Reserved.</address> </div> </div> </body> </html>