By AYA SHIOIRI/ Staff Writer
November 22, 2020 at 11:00 JST
An architectural rendering of Edogawa Ward's Eiko Kadono Museum of Children's Literature (Provided by the Edogawa Ward office)
Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward plans to deliver a real-life visit to the world of “Kiki’s Delivery Service” for its legion of fans.
A museum is scheduled to open in July 2023 in honor of Eiko Kadono, who wrote “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” the original novel on which Studio Ghibli Inc.’s film of the same name is based.
Kadono, a children’s literature author who won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in 2018, lived in the ward from childhood until she was 23.
Featured inside will be a re-creation of the town of Koriko, in which the story of “Kiki’s Delivery Service” takes place. It will be rendered in Kadono’s theme color of strawberry, while a large cat-shaped object will be placed in the center for visitors to take photos.
The background of the town will be decorated using projection mapping.
There will also be a reading area complete with all the works of Kadono and an exhibition room modeled after her studio.
“I want visitors to make memories here. Memories can give us energy as we live through our lives,” Kadono, 85, said.
“I thought that children nowadays are used to being given things and have less opportunities to find things on their own and enjoy them. I hope they read books here and discover the joy of reading and the amplitude of words.”
The three-story facility, tentatively called the Eiko Kadono Museum of Children’s Literature, will be designed by the office of acclaimed architect Kengo Kuma.
It will be located in a park filled with seasonal flowers.
The exterior will be painted white so that the building will accentuate the green surroundings and the strawberry-colored interior. Its roofs will be designed to look like a flower when they are seen from above.
“Flowers warm people’s hearts. I thought the roofs would look great on this hill,” Kuma, 66, said during a ceremony in October, which he attended remotely.
Edogawa Mayor Takeshi Saito said, “We want it to be a facility loved by many children.”
Officials estimate the project will cost about 3 billion yen ($29 million), including about 700 million yen to refurbish the park.
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