The Miho Museum houses Mihoko Koyama's private collection of Asian and Western antiques bought by the Shumei organisation. Mihoko Koyama (who died in 2003) was a follower of Mokichi Okada (1882 – 1955), a philosopher and spiritual leader who later became her life teacher. Okada held that the true nature of civilization lies in the realm of beauty—the realm of art. Under his tutelage, Koyama devoted herself to a life of faith, ultimately founding the spiritual organization, Shinji Shumeikai. Under the influence of Okada’s ideas, Koyama came to believe that finding and experiencing objects of beauty could exalt the spirit and bring beauty to the world at large. She met IM Pei in 1997 and had him design the Miho Museum on a mountainside in Shiga Prefecture, not far from Kyoto.
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