The Kosetsu Museum of Art is tucked away in Mikage, an upscale residential neighborhood in eastern Kobe that first flourished as a sake production area in the 18th century. The private facility is surrounded by a small garden of plum trees and a few benches covered with red parasols where green tea is served.

Opened in 1973, the Kosetsu is a repository for the private collection of Ryohei Murayama, who died 40 years earlier in 1933. Born in what is now Mie Prefecture in 1850, Murayama made a name for himself by launching the Osaka-based Asahi Shimbun newspaper in 1879. He later enjoyed a successful career as a politician, serving in various municipal, prefectural, and national posts (he won a seat in the Diet in Japan's first general election in 1890). Murayama was also an avid practitioner of the tea ceremony and an enthusiastic supporter of cultural enterprises, including influential scholar Tenshin Okakura's Asian art periodical Kokka, which he bankrolled. Concerned that Japan was in danger of losing its cultural heritage to the West after a stream of artworks began to be sold to foreign museums in the late 19th century, Murayama set out to develop his own collection. By about 1912, he had amassed a store of Japanese paintings, Buddhist sculptures, weaponry, calligraphy, lacquerware, and tea utensils, as well as antiquities from other Asian countries such as China and Korea.

Along with 18 Important Cultural Properties and 22 Important Cultural Assets (as designated by the Japanese government), the current collection includes noteworthy works by master painters like Kano Eitoku, Ogata Korin, and Maruyama Okyo.

Among the most eye-catching items on display is a pair of folding screens by an unknown artist from the 17th century. One depicts the Battle of Lepanto, a naval clash between the Holy League (a group of European Catholic nations) and the Ottoman Empire that occurred in 1571 off the coast of Greece. The sprawling and brilliantly colored scene was clearly inspired by Western painting, but also includes Japanese touches like rolling gold clouds at the top. The second piece, based on a world map from 1609, shows seas full of ships, labels on every known country, and insets at the bottom illustrating the local costumes and customs of various ethnic groups, including one in the middle of a cannibalistic feast.

The Kosetsu (a sobriquet used by Murayama himself) presents three exhibitions drawn from its own holdings every year, along with special shows in the spring and fall. Though the facility is small and only displays about 50 works at a time, the number of visitors is also limited, allowing for an unhurried and intimate viewing experience. But with the exception of a brief introduction on the museum's website, there is absolutely no English signage (not even the titles are translated). One imagines that this is about to change, however, as the museum plans to open a new branch in a highrise across the street from Asahi Shimbun headquarters in central Osaka in the spring of 2018.

The Mikage museum is in a 16,850-square-meter wooded compound that contains Murayama's original residence -- a huge Western-style manor built in 1909, which survived the devastating U.S. air raids of 1945 and the Kobe Earthquake of 1995 -- and a number of other structures including the Gennan teahouse (1911), a reproduction of which will be built inside the new museum in Osaka. Both the residence and the teahouse are Important Cultural Properties, but are unfortunately closed to the public and just barely visible beyond a high stone wall.

Visitors who make the trip to Mikage are encouraged to walk another 15 minutes up the hill along the Sumiyoshi River to the Hakutsuru Fine Art Museum, a massive facility built by the Hakutsuru Sake Brewing Company in 1934 to showcase Japanese and Chinese antiquities that the company's president began to acquire around the time that Murayama was collecting. Just across the street is a newer annex, opened in 1994, which is billed as "Japan's first carpet museum" and houses Middle Eastern textiles collected by a later head of the company.

Despite, or perhaps because of, its slightly remote location, the Kosetsu Museum of Art promises a relaxing day of visual pleasures, both artistic and natural.