Here’s How Museums Are Inventively Embracing Pokemon Go Swarms

On the tiny top floor of the sprawling British Museum is a curious collection of Japanese art that ranges from Samurai warrior swords to Manga comic books. Since 2014, it has housed some of the museum’s littlest masterpieces—namely, a collection of tiny, 300-year-old carved animals called netsuke, which merchants would string onto their kimono sashes as personal accessories. Some resemble long-tailed foxes; one is an eagle with a puppy in its talons. They’re cute but also grotesque; a little like today’s pint-size Pokemon.

The similarity is no coincidence. Netsuke, it turns out, are the earliest known relatives of the colorful, pudgy pocket monsters that millennials around the globe are seeking out on the augmented reality app Pokemon Go. So perhaps it’s fitting that Pokemon Go is sending its players to museums in droves.