Tokyo National Museum

This guide to the Tokyo National Museum opens in the 1870s, when Meiji-era decrees stripped Japan's Buddhist monasteries of land and forced monks to renounce their vows, leaving the ancient temple Horyuji crumbling. In 1876 its abbot petitioned the imperial household, offering to hand over treasures the temple had guarded for over a thousand years in exchange for money to save it. Look for the gilt bronze banners and carved masks in the cases nearby, objects that traveled here from Korea and Persia centuries before this museum ever existed.