The Sakhalin Museum of Local Lore was founded in 1896 in the Aleksandrovsky post. Since 1947, the museum has been located in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the building of the museum of the former Japanese governorate of Karafuto, built in 1937. The museum’s collections cover the period from ancient history to the present day: archaeological, ethnographic, historical, paleontological, geological, botanical, zoological and others. The museum collection includes collections from the Japanese governorate of Karafuto (1910-1945), the collection of the Alexander Museum (1920-1940), and modern acquisitions. Rare items include ancient objects of the traditional culture of the Sakhalin Ainu and Nivkhs. Visitors are offered unique original documents and materials from the time of the Sakhalin hard labor (1868-1905), materials on the nature of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, the history of Russian-Japanese relations of the 15th-20th centuries, and the culture of the disappeared aborigines.