S P O T ／ SPOT-242

Museum of Life and Sexuality (Megamikan)

命と性ミュージアム女神館いのちとせいみゅーじあむめがみかん

Tucked in the hills near Ikaho Onsen in Gunma, this private museum — opened in 2002 and formerly the Ikaho Goddess Hall — takes on the entire arc of human life and sexuality, from conception to birth, through models, panels, and figures arranged in chronological order. It belongs to the lineage of Japan's now-vanishing "hihokan" treasure halls and sex museums, but it sits awkwardly and interestingly between categories: part frank sex-education exhibit, part folk-curio sideshow. The first floor leans educational, walking visitors through human anatomy, the origins of life, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and genetics; elsewhere the displays turn explicit and surreal in the distinctive register of the genre. That dual character has earned it a paradoxical reputation — cited as a research subject by university scholars in education, sociology, and geography, while also remaining one of Gunma's most reliably documented "strange spots." Admission is age-restricted, and the museum is best approached with that context in mind. Just over ten minutes by car from the Shibukawa-Ikaho expressway interchange, it is an easy add-on to a hot-spring trip.