The Sakhalin Regional Museum () is a

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (, , ) is a city and the administrative center of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia. It is located on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East, north of Japan. Gas and oil extraction as well as processing are amongst the main industries on ...

on the Russian island of

Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...

. It is the largest museum in the

Sakhalin Oblast Sakhalin Oblast ( rus, Сахали́нская о́бласть, r=Sakhalinskaya oblastʹ, p=səxɐˈlʲinskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) comprising the island of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the Russian ...

. The Museum collects, researches, and displays materials relating to the natural history, archaeology, history, and ethnography of the region.

History

The first museum on

opened in what was then the military post of Alexandrovsk in North Sakhalin in 1896. A number of exhibits disappeared when the area was in Japanese hands, in 1905 and again between 1920 and 1925. The museum reopened in 1932. Meanwhile, in South Sakhalin, in the years when, as

Karafuto Prefecture , was established by the Empire of Japan in 1907 to govern the southern part of Sakhalin. This territory became part of the Empire of Japan in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese War, when the portion of Sakhalin south of 50°N was ceded by the R ...

, it formed part of the

Empire of Japan The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From Japan–Kor ...

, the official residence of the garrison commander initially served for the , a situation that lasted until 1935, when the building was repurposed for the Toyohara Military Police. Construction work on a new, dedicated museum building began in July 1935 and continued for two years, until July 1937; related documentation from the 1935

fiscal year A fiscal year (also known as a financial year, or sometimes budget year) is used in government accounting, which varies between countries, and for budget purposes. It is also used for financial reporting by businesses and other organizations. La ...

is preserved in the . For the site, land belonging to Karafuto Jinja was used; a or martial arts facility was also built nearby in Japanese-style. In 1937, the Karafuto Agency Museum reopened to the public in what was then the city of Toyohara a now

, with displays organized around the three themes of nature, culture, and industry. After the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin in August 1945, the Museum changed hands, reopening to the public the following May; for a period, until their repatriation, Japanese staff continued to work alongside their Soviet colleagues. In 1953, the Museum in Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky closed and its collections were transferred to the Sakhalin Regional Museum. In 1970, the Museum staged an exhibition of paintings from the

Tretyakov Gallery The State Tretyakov Gallery (; abbreviated ГТГ, ''GTG'') is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, which is considered the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Muscovite merchant Pavel ...

. In the 1980s and 1990s, artworks from the Museum were transferred to and formed the basis of the collection of the new , assistance was provided in the establishment of the , and several branch museums were created in other

districts of Sakhalin Oblast A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions ...

. (By 2000, there were seven such branch museums; in 2001 these were reestablished as independent museums in their own right.) Since 1990, the Museum has maintained relations with

Hokkaido Museum opened in Sapporo, Hokkaidō is the second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by ra ...

(and its predecessor institution the Historical Museum of Hokkaido) in

Sapporo is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in Hokkaido, Japan. Located in the southwest of Hokkaido, it lies within the alluvial fan of the Toyohira River, a tributary of the Ishikari River. Sapporo is the capital ...

, Japan, including joint research and staff exchanges.

Building

The or

Japonaiserie ''Japonisme'' is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japon ...

-style museum building, of

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

with a tiled roof, is in the Imperial Crown Style, to plans by (1900–1974), who sought to combine elements of

Japanese castle are fortresses constructed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries and came into their best-known form in the 16th century. Castles in Japan were built to guard important or strategic sites, such a ...

design with elements of western design. The building has a marked horizontal emphasis, the ''

tenshu is an architectural typology found in Japanese castle, Japanese castle complexes. They are easily identifiable as the highest tower within the castle. Common translations of ''tenshu'' include keep, main keep, or ''donjon''. ''Tenshu'' are cha ...

''-like components provide a strong central accent and give an impression of ascent, while staggered roofs add variety to enliven the

façade A façade or facade (; ) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loanword from the French language, French (), which means "frontage" or "face". In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important asp ...

. While the lower tiers are more western in their inspiration, the cut stone is reminiscent of castle walls, and the white plaster of the upper tiers and ''

onigawara are a type of roof ornamentation found in Japanese architecture. They are generally roof tiles or statues depicting an ''oni'' (ogre) or a fearsome beast. ''Onigawara'' were historically found on Buddhist temples, but are now used in many tradi ...

'' and other decorative features such are thoroughly Japanese. Inside,

skylight A skylight (sometimes called a rooflight) is a light-permitting structure or window, usually made of transparent or translucent glass, that forms all or part of the roof space of a building for daylighting and ventilation purposes. History O ...

s brighten the upper exhibition spaces with natural light, while cloth wallpaper once softened the acoustic. From 2005, restoration and repair work was carried out on the building.

Collection and display

The permanent display is organized around six main themes: the

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

of Sakhalin and the

Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...

; their

flora and fauna An organism is any living thing that functions as an individual. Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Many criteria, few of them widely accepted, have been pro ...

; " ancient cultures and indigenous peoples"; discovery and exploration (from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries); " the period of

hard labour Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included inv ...

"; and the first half of the twentieth century. Leading figures documented include Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy,

Mogami Tokunai was a Japanese samurai, geographer and explorer. Mogami was born in Dewa Province in what is now part of Yamagata Prefecture). He explored and mapped Hokkaido and Sakhalin and some of the Kuril Islands in 1785–1786. In his reports to the Tok ...

Mamiya Rinzō was a Japanese Exploration, explorer of the late Edo period. He is best known for his exploration of Karafuto, now known as Sakhalin. He mapped areas of northeast Asia then unknown to Japanese. Biography Mamiya was born in 1775 in Tsukuba Dist ...

Matsuura Takeshirō was a Japanese explorer, cartographer, writer, painter, priest, and antiquarian. During the late Edo period and Bakumatsu he journeyed six times to Ezo, including to Sakhalin and the Kuriles. In the early Meiji period he was an official in th ...

Bronisław Piłsudski Bronisław Piotr Piłsudski (; 2 November 1866 – 17 May 1918) was a Polish ethnologist who researched the Ainu people after he was exiled by Tsar Alexander III of Russia to the Far East. Piłsudski considered himself Polish, Lithuanian ...

, and

Igor Farkhutdinov Igor Pavlovich Farkhutdinov (; April 16, 1950 – August 20, 2003) was governor of Sakhalin Oblast, Russia during 1995–2003. Biography Igor Farkhutdinov was born in 1950 in Novosibirsk to a Russian mother and Tatar father. His maternal gra ...

, and the local oil and gas industry is also introduced. The collection includes replicas of local fossil finds, of ''

Nipponosaurus sachalinensis ''Nipponosaurus'' (meaning "Japanese lizard") is a Lambeosaurinae, lambeosaurine hadrosaur from sediments of the Yezo Group, in Sinegorsk on the island of Sakhalin, which was part of Japan at the time of the species' classification. The type sp ...

'' and '' Desmostylus hesperus''; taxidermied representatives of species featured in the

Red Data Book The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological spe ...

; materials relating to the Ainu,

Nivkh Nivkh or Amuric or Gilyak may refer to: * Nivkh people (''Nivkhs'') or Gilyak people (''Gilyaks'') * Nivkh languages or Gilyak languages * Gilyak class gunboat, ''Gilyak'' class gunboat, such as the Russian gunboat Korietz#Second gunboat, second R ...

, and

Uilta Oroks (''Ороки'' in Russian; self-designation: ''Ulta, Ulcha''), sometimes called Uilta, are a people in the Sakhalin Oblast (mainly the eastern part of the island) in Russia. The Orok language belongs to the Southern group of the Tungus ...

; and one of the four main boundary markers placed in 1906 along the 50th parallel at the time of the demarcation of the Sakhalin frontier following the

Treaty of Portsmouth The Treaty of Portsmouth is a treaty that formally ended the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905, after negotiations from August 6 to 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. U.S. P ...

that brought the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War (8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and the Korean Empire. The major land battles of the war were fought on the ...

to its close.

Gallery

File:Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Museum July 2012.jpg, Museum in 2012 File:Здание музея. Октябрь 2018 года.jpg, Museum in 2018 File:Karafuto Agency Museum（樺太庁博物館）.jpg, Karafuto Agency Museum (now Sakhalin Regional Museum) in 1937 File:Toyohara museum.jpg, Museum for the display of collections on the natural history of Karafuto in 1937

References

External links