Sculpture in the Hakone Hills

Most art museums ask you to stay quiet and keep your distance. The Hakone Open-Air Museum works the other way. Its sculptures stand outdoors on lawns and terraces cut into the mountainside, with the Hakone hills behind them, and much of the morning is spent walking in the fresh air between one work and the next.

This moment begins with a short ride on the Hakone Tozan Railway to Chokoku-no-Mori Station, two minutes on foot from the museum entrance. You arrive as the gates open at 9 a.m. with a private guide, while the lawns are still quiet, and spend the morning moving at your own pace between the outdoor collection and the Picasso Pavilion.

At opening time the grounds are cool and still, and the first sculptures appear one by one along the paths. Large bronze figures recline on the grass, abstract forms rise out of the planting, and the mountains frame each work differently as you walk. In autumn the maples around the lawns turn red, and in winter the clear air sharpens every outline.

A private guide changes the pace of the visit. Rather than following the map, you can stop where something catches your attention and hear how a piece was made or why it was placed where it stands.

The Hakone Open-Air Museum opened in 1969 as the first open-air art museum in Japan. Its grounds now cover around 70,000 square meters, roughly 17 acres, with around 120 modern and contemporary sculptures set across the slopes.

The collection includes works by Auguste Rodin, Joan Miró, and Henry Moore, whose sculptures are among the most prominent on the grounds. Moore believed that sculpture belonged outdoors, in natural light, and the museum follows the same idea, letting weather and season change how each piece looks from one visit to the next.

Indoors, the Picasso Pavilion holds one of the largest Picasso collections in the world, with more than 300 works. Ceramics make up a large part of it, with 188 pieces in the collection, alongside paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and gold and silver work. The displays rotate, so the pieces on view change over time.

The ceramics show a lighter, more playful side of Picasso’s work, and for children they make an easy way into an artist they may only know by name.

At the centre of the grounds stands the Symphonic Sculpture, a tower by the French artist Gabriel Loire, its walls made entirely of stained glass. Inside, a spiral staircase climbs through coloured light towards the top.

From the viewing platform, the whole museum spreads out below, with the sculptures scattered across the lawns and the mountains rising on every side. It is one of the best places on the grounds to understand how the museum was laid out to sit within the landscape.

Several works are made to be climbed and explored rather than viewed from a distance. The best known is Woods of Net by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam, a wooden pavilion built without any metal fittings, holding a huge, brightly coloured net that children can climb, bounce on, and lie in. It is open to children of elementary school age and younger.

Elsewhere on the grounds, children are free to pose like the figures around them, and the open lawns give them space to run between works. Before leaving, the hot-spring foot bath, filled with natural spring water, makes a warm place to sit and rest after a morning on your feet.

The museum is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last entry at 4:30 p.m. Arriving at opening time gives you the lawns at their quietest, before the grounds get busier. From Gora, Chokoku-no-Mori is one stop down the Hakone Tozan Railway, so the visit fits easily before lunch on a stay in the Hakone hills.

Photography of the outdoor sculptures is allowed for personal use. Comfortable shoes help, since the grounds are spread across a slope, and a light layer is useful in spring and autumn, when the morning air in the mountains can be cool. The museum has cafés and a restaurant looking out over the hills towards Sagami Bay for lunch afterwards.

Your Do Not Disturb expert arranges a private guide for the morning and times your arrival for the museum’s opening, with transfers to and from your ryokan if you would rather not take the train. For families, the route through the grounds can be planned around the works children are most likely to enjoy, with time set aside for Woods of Net and the foot bath.

The museum pairs naturally with a stay at Gora Kadan, one stop up the line, and with a day on the loop across Owakudani and Lake Ashi. Speak with Do Not Disturb to add a morning at the Hakone Open-Air Museum to your time in Japan.