Mogi Shichizaemon (1907-2012), the 12th head of the Mogi Honke (main ancestral household line), was interested in art from his youth and collected many works of art over a long period of time. The Mogi-Honke Museum of Art was founded in 2006 to share his art collection with the public so that many people can enjoy these works.

The collection includes approximately 2,900 ukiyo-e prints featuring the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai, The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road by Utagawa Hiroshige, as well as ukiyo-e by Kitagawa Utamaro, Tōshūsai Sharaku, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and others. The collection also covers Japanese paintings by artists such as Yokoyama Taikan, Ogura Yuki and Nakajima Chinami, Western-style paintings by artists including Umehara Ryūzaburō, Wada Eisaku and Kinutani Kōji, sculptures by Takamura Kōun, Hirakushi Denchū and Yabuuchi Satoshi, and ceramic art by Itaya Hazan. The total number of works of art owned by the Museum is approximately 4,300.

In addition to holding several special exhibitions each year, the museum displays around 60 to 70 items as a permanent exhibition. The museum’s architectural design is the work of Hikosaka Yutaka, and the landscape was designed by Ueyama Ryōko, who received the Good Design Award (Architecture and Environment Design Category) in 2002. The Inari shrine of the Mogi Honke is located at the end of the garden.

The ancestry of the Mogi family can be traced back to the Toki family, who resided in Mino province, and also to the Seiwagenji family. The family’s ancestor Maki Genbanokami Yorinori was a samurai, who served Toyotomi Hideyori. Yorinori committed suicide at the fall of Osaka Castle in the summer of 1615, so his wife Shige carried their little son Heizaburō, and escaped from the Castle. They managed to overcome a series of challenges and finally settled in Noda, in Shimousa province. This little child became the first Shichizaemon of the Mogi family. Shige started brewing miso for a living, and later started brewing soy sauce. As time passed, and the number of branch families increased, many of them worked brewing soy sauce. Noda became known as the town of soy sauce, located near Edo (present day Tokyo), which became its largest consumer.

In 1917, six Mogi families, including the Mogi Honke, the Takanashi family, who started brewing soy sauce even before the Mogi family, and the Horikiri family, who had been producing Kantō-style white sweet sake (mirin) in Nagareyama, formed a coalition to establish the Noda Shoyu Kabushiki Kaisha (Noda Soy Sauce Co., Ltd.), which later became Kikkoman Corporation.