The first thing that occurs to you as you survey the dark wooden floorboards, high skirting boards, deep-colored walls, fireplaces and — until July 25 — the selection of Eduoard Manet paintings at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Marunouchi, Tokyo, is that on entering this grand redbrick building you must have been transported, somehow, to Europe.

The experience seems utterly foreign, utterly 19th century and — considering you're actually in the middle of Tokyo's central business district and the year is 2010 — utterly surreal.

And yet, Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum is not to be confused with those comically kitsch examples of cultural transplantation for which Japan is famous — facilities such as Nagasaki's Dutch-themed amusement park, Huis Ten Bosch, for example.