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Kadokawa Culture Museum

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Kadokawa Culture MuseumKuma KengoBookshelf TheatreTokorozawalibrary

Photo: Fotointheworld / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0) · original

Saitama has plenty to see; Kadokawa Culture Museum is worth carving out real time for rather than passing through.

Kuma Kengo clad this building in about 20,000 slabs of granite hung at angles so the whole thing reads as a rock that has been split rather than a museum that has been designed.

The part people come for is the Bookshelf Theatre, a room walled floor to ceiling in eight-metre shelves holding tens of thousands of volumes, used as the surface for a projection-mapped show that runs at intervals through the day. Below it the Edit Town shelves are arranged so that unrelated subjects sit together deliberately, on the argument that browsing works better than searching.

Plan your visit

Time to allow

2–3 hours

Cost

Standard ticket covers the Bookshelf Theatre and Edit Town; special exhibitions ticketed separately — confirm current pricing before travelling

Hours

10:00 AM – 6:00 PM (last entry 5:30 PM) — confirm current hours before travelling

Closed: Closed Tuesdays, opening if Tuesday is a public holiday

Best time to visit

Year-round

Getting there

Access notes

Higashi-tokorozawa-wada 3-31-3, Tokorozawa City, within the Tokorozawa Sakura Town complex. About a short walk from Higashi-tokorozawa Station on the JR Musashino Line. Closed Tuesdays, opening if Tuesday is a public holiday. The standard ticket covers the Bookshelf Theatre and the Edit Town shelves; special exhibitions are ticketed separately. Confirm current admission pricing and opening hours before travelling, as both have changed since opening.

Local tips

**Time your arrival to a projection show.** The Bookshelf Theatre runs the mapping at intervals rather than continuously. Between shows it is a very large bookshelf. **Check the hours and the price before travelling.** The website is the only reliable source. **Edit Town is deliberately badly organised.** Shelving by association rather than by subject, so that a book on volcanoes sits next to one on temper. This is the museum's actual argument and it is more interesting than the theatre. **The building is worth circling outside.** Twenty thousand granite slabs at varying angles, and the effect changes completely with the light. Free to walk around. **Musashino Reiwa Shrine is in the complex.** A working shrine built in 2020 with a ceiling painting by Yamaguchi Akira, which is an odd thing to find beside a publishing company's museum. **Sakura Town has anime hotels and event halls.** The complex is built around Kadokawa's business and is busiest when an event is running. That is either the reason to come or the reason to check the calendar.

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