Mogi Shichizaemon (1907-2012), the 12th head of the Mogi Honke (main line), had been interested in art from his youth and collecting many art pieces over a long period of time. Mogi-Honke Museum of Art was founded in 2006 to share his art collection to the public so that many people can enjoy them as well.

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, Yabuuchi Satoshi, and ceramic art by Itaya Hazan. A total number of art pieces owned by the Museum is approximately 4,300.

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

The ancestry of Mogi family traces back to Toki family, who resided in Mino province and also to Seiwagenji family. The family’s descendant Maki Genbanokami Yorinori was a samurai, who served Toyotomi Hideyori. Yorinori committed suicide at the Siege of Osaka in Summer of 1615, so his wife Shige carried their little son Heizaburō, and escaped from Osaka 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 Mogi family.

After Shige started brewing miso for living, she 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, which became its large-scale consumer.

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