The Bookshelf Theatre at Kadokawa Culture Museum in Tokorozawa, Japan. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)
The Kadokawa Cultural Museum, in Tokorozawa city north of Tokyo, fuses museums of art, anime and oddities with a huge, reader-friendly library.
The five-story building itself resembles a huge boulder and the inside is full of wood and other natural elements.
Kadokawa Corp., one of Japan’s largest publishers of books, magazines and anime, owns the museum and library.
The foyer boasts some interesting items, including a model made for the 70th anniversary of the landmark 1950 film “Rashomon,” directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune.
A model made for the 70th anniversary of “Rashomon,” directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune, at Kadokawa Culture Museum in Tokorozawa, Japan. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)
An excerpt from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s novel is projected in the model’s background, along with the work’s symbolic rain.
Elsewhere you’ll find a statue of the bald, one-eyed boy, or Hitotsume-kozo, a supernatural apparition of Japan.
On the fourth floor, visitors will find Edit Town and 25,000 books from around the world.
Various zones in the library hold selections of poetry, music, theater, fashion, photography, film, design, science fiction, horror and magic book sections. There are books in multiple languages, including English.
The books are for in-museum reading only, but visitors can take them inside Edit Town to read, on any of the seats, including beanbags.
The Aramata Wunderkammer Museum is a bizarre space filled with oddities like skeletal specimens, mammoth hair and ‘pieces of UFOs.’ The shelves don’t really have a rhythm or rhyme to them.
Also on this floor is the stunning Bookshelf Theatre, complete with 26-foot-tall bookshelves that contain 50,000 books. A projection mapping work called “Books Want to Communicate” creates a light show on the bookshelf throughout the day, displaying words from Japanese novels.
A print of "Woman With a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son" by Claude Monet at the Kadokawa Culture Museum in Tokorozawa, Japan. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)
Bookshelf Theater is home until Jan. 19 to “Monet: I Can See the Lights, An Immersive Journey,” for 3,100 yen, or $22, for a day ticket. The ticket includes the exhibit and the libraries on the fourth and fifth floors. The exhibit is a digital journey through Monet’s life, including Impressionistic re-creations of the people and places that defined his life.
This exhibition is displayed in Japanese and English and explains Monet’s painting techniques and his influence from Japonisme, due to its vivid sense of color, bold composition and use of contour lines. Examples of Japanese prints are displayed with which Monet, an admirer of Japanese art, decorated his home in Giverny, France.
The fifth-floor Musashino Corridor holds books, including manga, related to the city in which the museum is located, again with a large space where guests can sit on beanbags and read.
There is also a spot — a real bridge with a large print of “Bridge Over a Pond of Waterlilies” — where guests may photograph themselves. Props, including a parasol and a fan, are available.
Kadokawa Culture Museum in Tokorozawa, Japan. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)
On the QT
Directions: Address: 3-31-3 Higashi-Tokorozawa Wada, Tokorozawa-shi, Saitama, Japan 359-0023. An 11-minute walk from Higashi-Tokorozawa Station.
Times: Open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.
Costs: Admission from 1,800 yen, or $12.81, for children to 3,100 yen for adult one-day ticket that includes the Bookshelf Theater and “Monet: I Can See the Lights.”
Food: There are cafes on the second and fifth floors.
Information: Online: kadcul.com
