Ken Domon Museum

Ken Domon was one of Japan's foremost documentary photographers, and this museum in Sakata, his home city, holds around 70,000 of his photographs. His work spans postwar reconstruction, traditional festivals, temples, and portraits of ordinary Japanese life from the 1940s through the 1970s. The building, designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, fits its lakeside setting with a restraint that suits the subject matter. Rotating exhibitions draw from the archive, and the permanent collection includes his best-known series on Chuson-ji temple and the children of Chikuho.