The museum displays personal effects, manuscripts, first editions, and documents owned by well over a hundred writers of Japanese literature, including Natsume Sōseki and Kawabata Yasunari, as well as film director Yasujirō Ozu.

It stands half way up a hill in Kamakura, overlooking Sagami Bay.

Eisaku Satō, a former Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner, once made use of it as his villa.

It also appeared in a scene from "Spring Snow", a novel by Yukio Mishima, a well-known novelist.

It opened to the public as Kamakura Museum of Literature in November 1985.