Open from 9 am to 5 pm. Entrance fee is 500yen. The wall art collection consists of murals displayed to show the events from the birth to the demise of the Meiji emperor in chronological order, with the titles of the works representing the events. The first 40 works are Japanese style paintings while the latter 40 are Western- style works. These murals are precious historical records that show the politics, culture and manners of the era.

Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery is like no other picture gallery that I’ve been too. What made it special? Before visiting, I’d never heard of the gallery. We seemed to stumble upon it after, visiting the Japan 2020 Olympics stadium ion the making, and wandered around the car park until we found the entrance and ventured inside. I checked on Trip Advisor, and it's currently listed as the 49th of 397 things to do in Shinjuku. That astonishes me! That there could be 48 other better things to do in Shinjuku… I find everything about this gallery fascinating. Let me share with you what the brochure says about the gallery. Gaien was constructed with donation collected by an organisation of individual supporters formed to remember the virtues of the Imperial couple all through the ages. <This place is huge. The donations collected must have been a massive effort> It was completed on Oct 22, 1926, and donated to Meiji Jingu Gaien. The outer garden covers an area of 330 000 square metres. Sports facilities around the venue include baseball, golf driving range, softball, footsul, tennis, and an ice-skating rink. So the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery is in the centre of The Outer Garden, or this huge park, which I guess is why we found it after visiting the Olympics venue. Still so many interesting things about this gallery… The gallery depicts the events from birth to the demise of the Meiji Emperor in chronological order. There are exactly 80- images. Every image steps you through the timeline. Fortunately, there was a detailed English translation, it was not perfect, but you got the jist of what was happening. The first 40 works are Japanese style paintings, while the later 40 works are Western-style works. I find it fascinating that they went with one style and then swapped to another style, and opted for a Western-style – why? What does this mean? Now here is the thing I found most interesting. Each painting is 3 m * 2.7 metres, almost a square. The place is like a huge gallery purpose-built for Instagram. Every image practically is a perfect Instagram image. Obviously, it was designed and built many years before Insta, but it was so perfect, this OLD gallery, on such NEW technology. All the images are done by different artists, and they entered a competition, there were 156 entries, and from that, the 80 works in the gallery were chosen. “Meiji” is the name of the era (1868 to 1912) in which Emperor Meiji ruled. Emperor Meiji (1852 – 1912) is the 122nd emperor of Japan, the great grandfather of the current Emperor. His wife was Empress Shoken (1850 – 1914)