Satoshi Shinohara
Associate Professor, Teaching Qualification Center,Tokai University/
Curator and Acting Manager of Administrative Office,
Matsumae Memorial Museum

1. What is a Universal Museum?

A Universal Museum refers to a “museum for everyone to enjoy.” It embodies an ideal form of a museum that is open to all, regardless of nationality, race, gender, age, disability, social status, or economic standing. I would like to emphasize the term “ideal form” because the goal of being enjoyable for everyone is a lofty and precious one.

This inclusivity extends to museums with themes focused on space and the natural sciences, often referred to as Universal Museums because “universal” signifies a connection to the cosmos and the global sphere. Similarly, it can also refer to large-scale museums like the British Museum or the Louvre, among others(ⅰ). On the other hand, “universal” conveys meanings such as “common, universal, applicable to all,” which gave rise to the term Universal Design, emphasizing user-friendly designs accessible to everyone. In Japan, museums that incorporate Universal Design are commonly referred to as Universal Museums.

In recent years, the term Inclusive Museum has also been used. This concept is based on the idea of social inclusion, where museums embrace all individuals as members of society, fostering social inclusion and coexistence. However, when using the term Social Inclusion, it is essential to acknowledge that there is a strong connotation of the majority including the minority. While achieving a symbiotic society is crucial, we must not forget that most society’s members are consistently part of the majority.

In a Universal Museum, there is no distinction between the majority and the minority. The museum director, curators, local authorities who establish the museum, users, and visitors, and local residents-all individuals stand on the same horizon. Yasuyuki Hirai defines a Universal Museum as “a museum that addresses societal challenges caused by social exclusion, including a diverse range of individuals through sensory appreciation, and fosters mutual relationships between museums and visitors” (ii).

2. Expansion and Current Status of the Universal Museums Initiative

The Encyclopedia of Museums (Tokyodo Publishing, 1996), supervised by Kimihiro Kurita, includes a section on Individuals with Disabilities and Museums and states that “museums are places for lifelong education [ …] and must be accessible to individuals with disabilities who may find it challenging to visit compared to able-bodied individuals.” It cites museums such as the Nagoya City Museum, Gifu Prefectural Museum, Edo Tokyo Museum, Gallery TOM, Nagoya City Art Museum, Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Saitama Prefectural Museum of Natural History, and Wakayama Prefectural Museum of Natural History as examples that attempt exhibitions tailored for visually impaired individuals.In 1998, a symposium titled Towards a Universal Museum – Visual Impairment and Museums was held at the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Natural History. The initiative for Universal Museums in Japan started as a practical application of museums open to individuals with disabilities(ⅲ).

In 2006, the National Museum of Ethnology (Japan) hosted an exhibition titled Touching Words, Touching Worlds – A Universal Museum Created by Tactile Culture. Following this, the Universal Museum Research Association was established in 2009, centered around Kojiro Hirose, who organized the exhibition. Since then, the association has expanded its practices in various directions. Their initiatives have been documented in publications such as Museums to Touch and Enjoy and A Museum Where People Are Kind (both published by Seikyusha in 2012 and 2016, respectively).These practices are showcased in a diverse array of museums, including the Sannai-Maruyama Site, Aomori Prefectural Museum of Art, International Christian University Yawata Memorial Museum, the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Minokamo City Museum, Shiga Prefectural Azumi Archaeological Museum, Kids Plaza Osaka, Wakayama Prefectural Museum, Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Matsumae Memorial Museum, Mie Prefectural Museum, and Nanzan University Museum of Anthropology, among others.In contrast to the traditional visually oriented museum approach, these efforts can be seen as attempts to explore new modes of appreciation centered around the sense of touch. Their practical applications have extended to activities like city walking tours and universal tourism. In 2021, the National Museum of Ethnology hosted the Universal Museum: Touch! The Great Exhibition of ‘Touch.’Apart from the Universal Museum Research Association, initiatives such as the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art’s Forms in Art – Modeling to See with Your Hands since 1989, sculptor Gako Kuwayama’s Exhibition to Touch with Your Hands has been ongoing since the 1990s, and recent projects like the Seeing with Your Hands Project led by Hiroko Takesue of Yamanashi University, and the exhibition Can I Touch This? – An Exhibition to Touch Sculptures at the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art Annex (2022), highlight the expanding practice of new modes of appreciation through the sense of touch.

3. Universal Museum Initiatives and Expansion of Activities at the Matsumae Memorial Museum

The Matsumae Memorial Museum located at the Shonan Campus of Tokai University, was established in 1983 as part of the 40th-anniversary commemorative project to inherit the founding principles of this private university. In 2004, it received designation as a museum-equivalent facility and adopted the nickname “Museum of History and Future.” Subsequently, efforts were made to enhance its role and function as a university museum contributing to education and research, providing practical learning opportunities for students aspiring to become curators.The initiatives of the Universal Museum at our museum began with a public lecture series called the Theory and Practice of the Universal Museum, held in 2013. Since the following year, we have organized annual public symposiums with the theme of the Universal Museum, created touch exhibits within the museum, and collaborated with external museums and neighboring municipalities. These efforts aim to engage in various outreach activities alongside students aspiring to become curators(ⅳ).

Starting in 2020, we also launched the Tomoiki (Living Together) Art Support Project in collaboration with Kanagawa Prefecture. This project which is linked to nearby schools such as the Hiratsula School for the Visually Impaired and the Isehara Support School focuses on creating opportunities and improving the environment for everyone, regardless of the degree or condition of disability, to create cultural artworks, appreciate and present them. The students are encouraged to try their hands at creating new works of art based on their intuition and experience with ancient Andean artifacts in the university’s collection or to create free-form works by touching various materials used for sculpture, such as water clay, wax, plaster, and bronze. Afterwards, based on their own creative experiences, they touch and appreciate the sculptures in the museum(ⅴ).

As part of outdoor sculpture maintenance activities initiated in 2014, the Touch☆Experience Tour continues to allow participants to touch sculptures, turning preservation activities into tactile appreciation practices. The practical sessions, involving students in the curator program, high school students, local residents, and municipal employees from Kanagawa Prefecture, have expanded to neighboring municipalities such as Hadano and Odawara cities, as well as to Tokyo’s Kita Ward. There is a notion that tactile appreciation may lead to the deterioration of artworks. While this is indeed a fact, the practical experience gained from the Touch☆Experience Tour reveals that those of us accustomed to “consuming” artworks through glass cases have had limited opportunities to develop a consciousness as custodians preserving and passing on these cultural assets. The act of touching with our hands nurtures affection and attachment to the objects being touched.

With the amendment of the Cultural Assets Preservation Act in 2018, a system of regional plans for the preservation and utilization of cultural assets in municipalities in order to utilize cultural assets in community development and to ensure that the entire community is involved in their inheritance. Tactile appreciation is expected not only to discover new charms in the region’s cultural arts but also to contribute to the development of custodians who cherish and pass on these cultural assets.

4. Future Developments

Do you know about the Museum Act? This law, which defines how museums should be established and operated, is based on the spirit of the Social Education Act. The Social Education Act designates museums as “institutions for social education” and outlines the role of the national and local governments in creating an environment where all citizens must strive to enhance their cultural education related to practical life using every opportunity and place. Furthermore, the Social Education Act, in line with the spirit of the Fundamental Law of Education, which advocates the ideals of lifelong learning and equal educational opportunities for all, ensures that education is not discriminated against based on race, creed, gender, social status, economic status, or lineage. The Fundamental Law of Education, in turn, is based on the principles of the Constitution of Japan. This legal structure is referred to as the “ladder structure” of the Museum Act. In other words, the social significance of museums, as defined by the Museum Act, is not unrelated to our constitutional rights such as the right to life and the right to education, and the Museum Act has, from its inception, embodied the concept of an open museum.

Starting from April 1, 2023, a new Museum Act has been enforced, adding the phrase based on the spirit of the Basic Law for Culture and the Arts in addition to the existing Social Education Act. On the other hand, legislation related to disabilities has progressed, such as the amendment of the Basic Law for Persons with Disabilities (2011), the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Elimination Act (2016), and the law promoting cultural and artistic activities by persons with disabilities (2018). However, Kojiro Hirose, a blind individual, states, “The Universal Museum is not just about accommodating people with disabilities or supporting the vulnerable. It is a grand experiment to reclaim the ‘diversity of senses’ that humanity lost during the visually dominant process of modernization(ⅵ).”Even if expressed as a “museum that respects the diversity of senses,” if museums are to play a role in changing the visually dominant modern society itself, the restoration of touch will be an important keyword in the future. I believe that museums that allow people to touch and cherish truly valuable things, experiencing them with their hands and skin, can contribute to the realization of a symbiotic society, being friendly to both individuals and the environment, moving away from the era of consuming mass-produced items visually.

In our museum’s upcoming renewal, we plan to develop exhibits related to tactile interfaces utilizing illusions, such as the Rubber Hand Illusion. This illusion involves showing the subject an artificial hand (rubber hand) while simultaneously stroking the subject’s own hand and the artificial hand with a brush, creating the illusion that the artificial hand feels like their own. This exhibit aims to convey the allure and wonder of touch in an understandable way, focusing on the majority with visual abilities. Through the practical implementation of this museum that respects the diversity of senses, we hope to expand the circle of the Universal Museum not only to students aspiring to become curators but also to many students shaping the future. We aim to involve faculty, staff, local residents, and neighboring municipalities in this endeavor, contributing to the improvement of Quality of Life (QOL) as envisioned by our university and launching a new museum concept. We will work towards realizing this vision.

• (i)
  In this context, claiming universality also carries political implications, such as evading requests for the return of cultural assets from former colonial nations. While acknowledging that these cultural properties were plundered in the past. The idea is that they are preserved by advanced countries in large museums as a universal collection representing humanity. This perspective is discussed by Reiko Hara in “Progress towards the Universal Museum” (‘Museum Chiba: Bulletin of the Chiba Prefecture Museum Association’ (46), Chiba Prefecture Museum Association, 2020).
• (ii)
  Yasuyuki Hirai’s “A Study on the Basic Factors of Universal Museum and its Evaluation and Usage” (Doctoral Dissertation, Kyushu University Academic Information Repository, 2016).
• (ⅲ)
  In 2004, the Japan Museum Association conducted research on the project “Creating Museums that are Friendly to Everyone,” commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and compiled a report. This is discussed in publications such as ‘Desirable Forms of Museums Series 7: Creating Museums that are Friendly to Everyone – Barrier-Free’ (Japan Museum Association, 2006). Additionally, there are books that discuss the use of museums from the perspective of people with disabilities, such as Kazuo Komami’s “Towards Museums Where Everyone Can Learn – Museum Studies in Public Education” (Gakubunsha, 2008).
• (iv)
  Our past activity reports are available on our website (http://www.kinenkan.u-tokai.ac.jp).
• (v)
  The creative achievements of children, including works by instructors, are showcased in an entrance lobby exhibition titled “Creating the World of Hands,” presented at the end of the fiscal year (https://tomoiki-art.com).
• (vi)
  Kojiro Hirose discusses the impact of museums on society in “Changing Society from Museums – Results of Public Symposia” (National Museum of Ethnology, ‘Universal Museum: Touch it! The Great Exhibition of “Touch”‘ Catalog (Chisagosha, 2021)).

Edited and published by the Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities.

Published on July 25th, 2023.