Nasu Teddy Bear Museum

The Nasu Teddy Bear Museum in Nasu, Tochigi, is a museum of teddy bears and other stuffed toys. It opened in 1997 and has a sister museum, the Izu Teddy Bear Museum. According to the museum, it chose the teddy bear as its theme because the bear is the most standard figure in the history of stuffed toys, and has long been given by parents as a wish for a child's happiness.

The collection

The best-known bear in the collection is Teddy Edward, described by the museum as the teddy bear that has travelled the world more than any other. He belonged to Sarah, the daughter of the photographer Patrick Matthews and his wife Mollie, who made him the hero of 19 books and 12 films for the BBC series Watch with Mother. His travels took him down the Niger in a dugout canoe, to Everest and into the Grand Canyon on a donkey. Edward came to the museum after Patrick Matthews died in 1996.

The Globe Bear was made by the Dutch teddy bear artist Anna Koets for Good Bears of the World, a group that gives teddy bears to people who need comfort. From the summer of 1995 it travelled about 80,000 km through the Americas, Europe and Asia, and in December 1996 the museum bought it at a charity auction held to raise money for the group.

The antique bears include Steiff bears from between 1904 and 1912 and from about 1910, and bears made around 1940 by Schuco in Germany and Chad Valley in Britain. Works by teddy bear artists from Japan and abroad are shown too, among them Rushmore Bears by Beverly White of the United States, based on the presidents' heads carved on Mount Rushmore, and a Little Women scene by Rosalie Fleischmann, in which the four sisters listen to their mother read a letter from their father. Not every piece is on display at all times.

The Totoro exhibition

In 2009 the museum began an exhibition of plush toys from My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, となりのトトロ). It ran for six years and returned as a long-term exhibition in 2016.

Workshop, shop and tea room

In the workshop, visitors make a stuffed teddy bear, Totoro or Catbus of their own. A stuffing machine fills the toy with cotton and pellets, the opening in its back is sewn shut, and the finished toy is weighed and measured and given a passport. It takes about 30 minutes.

The shop and the tea room, Teddy's Garden, are in a separate building from the exhibition hall. The shop sells limited-edition replica bears, artist bears and goods made only for the museum. The tea room serves cakes and drinks, among them a large pudding made with eggs and milk from Nasu and cookies in the shape of teddy bears.