Magosaburō Ōhara

Here's a guy who could have just sat on his textile fortune and called it a life, but instead Magosaburō Ōhara decided to drag a genuine world-class art collection to Kurashiki, of all places — a small canal town in Okayama — and open Japan's first Western art museum in 1930. He sent his painter friend Torajiro Kojima on buying trips to Europe, and Kojima came back with El Grecos and Monets. That's a level of cultural ambition that still feels kind of audacious a century later. Ōhara also funded social reform projects and labor welfare programs when that wasn't exactly fashionable for industrialists. He's not a celebrity in any modern sense, but if you've ever wandered into the Ohara Museum and felt that strange, wonderful dissonance of standing in front of a European masterpiece in a quiet Japanese city, that's entirely his doing.

Magosaburō Ōhara (1880–1943) was a Japanese industrialist, banker, and prominent art collector born in Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture. He is best known for founding the Ohara Museum of Art in Kurashiki in 1930, the first Western-art museum in Japan. Ōhara amassed a distinguished collection of European paintings and was a leading figure in Meiji- and Taisho-era business and philanthropy. He was decorated with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class.

Name (English)

Magosaburō Ōhara

Name (Japanese)

大原孫三郎

Reading

おおはら まごさぶろう

Born

January 1, 1880 – January 1, 1943

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Dragon (Tatsu)

Origin

Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Art collector / Banker

Awards & achievements

• Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class (year unknown)

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%9F%E5%AD%AB%E4%B8%89%E9%83%8E

Tags

• From Okayama Prefecture
• Art collector
• Banker

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.