I believe everyone is familiar with the name of the Japanese architectural master “Kengo Kuma”. The Musashino Art Museum in Kanto, Japan, which he designed, will open next month, bringing a new cultural landmark that is both a library, a museum, and an art gallery, as well as a paradise eagerly awaited by anime fans!
Kadokawa Musashino Museum is one of the projects of the municipal development plan “Cool Japan Forest,” jointly planned by the Japanese Kadokawa Group, which operates in film, publishing, and online media, and Saitama Prefecture’s Tokorozawa City. Cool Japan Forest is dedicated to creating a large-scale complex facility called “Tokorozawa Sakura Town,” which includes shopping malls, cafes, hotels, shrines, and more, transforming Tokorozawa City into a culturally compatible area with nature. Designed by Kengo Kuma and located within “Tokorozawa Sakura Town,” Kadokawa Musashino Museum is a building designed to promote Japanese anime culture.
The exterior of the Musashino Art University Museum is an irregular polyhedron, built from as many as 20,000 pieces of granite in different colors, like a giant stone standing in the city, giving a visually stunning and impactful feeling. The unique lines and contours appear even more diverse under the refraction of sunlight!
This museum has a total of 5 floors, with the first floor being a gallery, comic, and light novel library where anime fans can enjoy up to 50,000 collections! The second floor of the museum is a café, shop, and main hall, while the third floor is the favorite “EJ Animation Museum” for anime fans. The fourth and fifth floors are a connected space, featuring an 8-meter tall large “bookshelf theater” curated by Japanese cultural scholar Masataka Oka and writer Hiroshi Aramata, showcasing 350,000 collections published by Kadokawa Group, truly a vast sea of books! These two floors also have audiovisual rooms where you can watch a variety of films and TV shows. In addition to enjoying anime and other books, the Kadokawa Musashino Museum also regularly holds events with the theme of “playing with books, meeting with books.”
The highly anticipated Kadokawa Musashino Museum was originally planned to open in June, before the Tokyo Olympics, and fully open in November. However, due to the impact of the epidemic, the opening date is expected to be postponed until early August. When the epidemic is over, when you travel to Japan again, come here to check in and pay your respects!
Image source: Kadokawa Musashino Museum @facebook, twitter & official website, Google
