One of the Museum’s most popular settings is Sunkaraku, a classic Japanese teahouse whose very name, meaning "Evanescent Joys," reflects the spirit of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony as a temporary refuge from the complexities of daily life. Its architecture reveals a special delight in natural materials—cedar thatch for the roof, nandina and red pine with the bark intact for the pillars, bamboo stalks for the ceiling and rainspouts, and earth-colored plaster for the walls.

The Museum acquired Sunkaraku from Ōgi Rodō, the architect who constructed it using elements from an eighteenth-century teahouse. Diaries kept by one of the participants in the tea ceremonies held here reveal that guests included leaders of both the financial and political worlds of early twentieth-century Japan, for whom Ōgi Rodō designed country retreats and teahouses. The Museum’s teahouse is the only one of Rodō's works outside Japan, where just three of his buildings are extant.

Located in Gallery 244