The Miho Museum building is comprised of two wings that stretch out to the north and south from a spacious reception hall, each containing separate collections that together lend the museum its very special character. The South Wing contains an astonishing collection of treasures from the old-world civilizations of Egypt and Eurasia. In an amazingly short span of time, just six years, these artworks came together under the direction of Ms Hiroko Koyama, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the museum and the Shumei Culture Foundation. It contains some of the best examples of antiquities to be found in any museum.

The North Wing houses a fine collection that centers on traditional Japanese art and craft. Among them are important cultural properties, which cannot under law leave Japan. Representing over 40 years of connoisseurship, the foundation of the Shumei collection is found in this wing. Its origins were tea ceremonial objects that were privately collected by Mrs. Mihoko Koyama, mother of Ms Hiroko Koyama and spiritual leader of Shinji Shumeikai.

The treasures of the South Wing speak of ancient man's struggle to surpass himself and the emergence and expansion of great cultures, while the Japanese centered collection found in the Miho Museum’s North Wing has a more pensive and introspective theme. The ancient art from Egypt and Eurasia found in the South Wing conveys an image of immortality that is both imminent and all-powerful. The Japanese Collection of the North Wing unveils a sense of timelessness that comes from the human heart at peace with nature, a sense of serene introspection. Together the North and South Wings stand in counterpoint to each other, representing a duality inherent in all mankind.

That these two separate parts of the Shumei Collection came together in one space makes the character of the Miho unique among museums of Japan and the world. These two wings illuminate two distinct aspects of human cultural endeavor and expression, as well as two separate aspects of the human psyche. And the elementary belief that art can have a spiritual content that nurtures an individual's spiritual development is the unifying theme of the entire collection of both the North and the South Wings.