Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo

In a corner of Marunouchi, among rows of office towers, stands a red-brick Western-style building. The Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo, opened in April 2010 in a reconstruction, based on the original design, of Mitsubishi Ichigokan, the first Western-style rental office building Mitsubishi put up in Marunouchi in 1894.

The original was designed by the British architect Josiah Conder in the Queen Anne style. It was demolished in 1968 because of its age, and the reconstruction was completed on the same site in April 2009. Some of the original stone handrail parts have been reused inside. When it was built, the building also housed the banking department of Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha, and the former banking hall is now a cafe. The museum is part of Marunouchi Brick Square and is about a 5-minute walk from JR Tokyo Station.

The museum's theme is modern art from the late 19th to the early 20th century. It has no permanent exhibition; it holds three special exhibitions a year, with smaller exhibitions drawn from its own collection shown alongside. Because the building began life as offices, the galleries on floors one to three are a string of about 20 small rooms averaging roughly 40 square meters, so you tend to get close to each work rather than viewing large pieces from a distance. The opening exhibition was "Manet and Modern Paris."

The collection centers on Western art of the late 19th century, contemporary with the building, and includes works by Odilon Redon and Félix Vallotton as well as Toulouse-Lautrec. Notable holdings include the Joyant Collection, more than 200 Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs and posters that Lautrec himself kept and that his friend the dealer Maurice Joyant later took over, and the John & Miyoko Unno Davy Collection of more than 200 ceramics, silverware and glass pieces on the theme of Japonisme in daily life. The museum is a sister museum of the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi, France. It closed for a long period of repairs from April 2023 and reopened on November 23, 2024.

Inside are Cafe 1894 and Store 1894, as well as a history archive room introducing the story of Marunouchi. Nearby are the Artizon Museum (about 790 m), the Mitsui Memorial Museum (about 1.3 km) and the site of Edo Castle (about 1.2 km), all within walking distance after an exhibition.