Ainokura Folklore Museum

Ainokura Folklore Museum occupies the former Ozaki family residence in the Gokayama village of Ainokura, itself a UNESCO World Heritage site for its cluster of steep-roofed gassho-zukuri farmhouses. The museum fills the traditional structure with everyday objects from Edo-period mountain life: farming tools, work clothing, kitchen implements, and weaving equipment used by families who spent winters largely cut off from the outside world. That geographic isolation, ironically, preserved Gokayama's distinct cultural traditions for generations. The second floor explains how gassho-style roofs were engineered to shed the region's heavy snowfall. A second folk museum sits elsewhere in the same village, and the two together give a thorough picture of what life looked like here two centuries ago.