It was established by the City of Nemuro in 2004 and is classed as a general museum,[1] collecting and exhibiting materials relating both to the humanities and the natural sciences.

The red-brick building in which the museum is housed dates to 1942, when it was built for a communications detail from the Imperial Japanese Navy Ōminato Guard District.

[1][2] The collection of some forty thousand items[2] includes a painting of the ship Ekaterina (俄羅斯舩之図), dating from the time Adam Laxman arrived aboard the vessel on his 1792 Japanese expedition, and designated a Municipal Tangible Cultural Property;[3] one of the four main boundary markers placed in 1906 along the 50th parallel at the time of the demarcation of the Sakhalin frontier following the Treaty of Portsmouth that brought the Russo-Japanese War to its close (the only time[4] Japan has used boundary stones to define its territory; cf.

Painting 75 at the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery) (国境標石); items relating to the sea otters of the Kuriles; cannery labels (cf.

the Nemuro Straits Coastal Cannery Labels that are part of Japan Heritage "Story" #084[5]); a dogū and other grave goods excavated from the Hatsutaushi 20 Site (初田牛２０遺跡) (a Prefectural Tangible Cultural Property); and ceramics, including Urahoro-style Jōmon pottery of c. 7,500 BC, a Jōmon pot of c. 4,000 BC adorned with a bear that is the oldest animal design found to date in eastern Hokkaidō (a Municipal Tangible Cultural Property), and ceramics of the later Okhotsk and Satsumon cultures.