The name of the museum, "Sen-oku" (泉屋), is a reference to the trade name "Izumiya" used by the Sumitomo family during the Edo period (1603-1868), when the family was engaged in copper smelting.
The word "fountain(Izumi)" has been used as a symbol of Sumitomo. The history of the character "fountain" can be traced back to the Chinese bronze inscriptions on ancient Chinese bronze vessels, which are representative of the museum's collection. The shape of the inscription is a representation of water gushing out of a rock pit and flowing out widely.
　The Sen-oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo (formerly the Sen-oku hakukokan Museum, Tokyo, hereafter referred to as "the Museum") opened in October 2002 on the site of the former Azabu villa of the Sumitomo family in Roppongi 1-chome, Tokyo, as a branch of the Sen-oku hakukokan Museum (Shishigatani, Kyoto). Over the past 18 years, the museum has organized exhibitions introducing modern paintings, crafts, and tea ceremony utensils from the museum collection, as well as special exhibitions in Tokyo of masterpieces from the Sumitomo Collection housed in the Kyoto Main Museum, thus continuing activities that take advantage of the synergy between the East and West museums.
　The museum will enter a period of extended closure for renovation after the "Kinbun" exhibition ends at the end of 2019, with construction beginning on April 1, 2020. Construction proceeded smoothly while taking adequate measures against new coronavirus infection, and was completed in September 2021.