THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
February 3, 2020 at 17:57 JST
Attractions at the Toshimaen amusement park in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward on Feb. 3. The park may be closed in stages. (Kotaro Ebara)
With a wave of a magic wand, the Toshimaen amusement park in Tokyo's Nerima Ward will make way for a Harry Potter theme park.
While it won't happen that quickly in real life, the Toshimaen park, which has operated since 1926, will likely shut down in the near future, according to sources.
Major U.S. film distributor Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. plans to rent part of a roughly 20-hectare plot of land where Toshimaen now stands from the park's operator, Seibu Holdings Inc., to open the Potter attraction as soon as fiscal 2023, the sources said.
The Warner Bros. park will recreate the world of the globally popular Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling and the movie series based on them.
The Tokyo metropolitan government is expected to purchase the rest of the land to turn it into a large public park for use as a disaster evacuation site.
Warner Bros., Seibu Holdings and the Tokyo metropolitan government are discussing the plan and are expected to make an official decision as early as this spring.
If the plan is achieved, the Nerima facility will become Japan's second theme park based on Harry Potter. In 2014, Universal Studios Japan in Osaka opened a Harry Potter attraction that has been gaining in popularity.
The long-running Toshimaen theme park, located near central Tokyo, features a large water park and roller coasters.
In recent years, it has struggled to attract visitors, mainly due to its aging facilities. In fiscal 2018, 1.12 million people visited the park, less than one-third the number of its peak of 3.9 million in fiscal 1992.
Tokyo has long considered turning the area it stands on into a public park, first drawing up a plan to do so in 1957, but over the years it has made little progress.
In 2011, after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan, Tokyo decided to buy part of the land and redevelop the area, but it has yet to flesh out the details.
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