As COVID-19 spread around the world, many museums were forced to close their doors. Luckily, many are going virtual, allowing us to leave the house without going anywhere and browse art galleries without even buying tickets. Now, cinephiles and anime fans can virtually visit the Ghibli Museum, a celebration of the prolific Japanese animation studio’s work and history, designed by Hayao Miyazaki himself.
The Ghibli Museum closed its doors in February as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and though it opened again in July with limited capacity, travel restrictions and financial limitations will continue to make the museum inaccessible to overseas fans. To remedy this, the museum launched a YouTube page in April, posting a virtual tour one video at a time so you can experience the exhibits remotely.
What Is The Ghibli Museum?
Established in 2001 and designed by Miyazaki personally, the space is part–children’s museum and part–interactive art gallery. Installations focus on Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s films and the productions behind them, from pre-Ghibli Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind through worldwide hits like Princess Mononoke and Ponyo.
The museum’s first floor explores the company’s history and its animation processes, including a mock-up art director’s studio replete with sketchbooks, reference materials, and candy bowls, as well as Ghibli regalia like Kiki’s Delivery Service storyboards. There’s a rooftop garden as well, guarded by a life-sized Laputian robot soldier from Castle in the Sky. The museum is also home to the Tri Hawks reading room and bookstore; the Mamma Aiuto souvenir shop; and the Straw Hat Café, which serves food, drinks, and sweets inspired by Studio Ghibli’s iconic films.
On the first floor, there’s a small theater that screens museum-exclusive shorts from the studio: among them are Koro’s Big Walk (2002), Totoro sequel Mei and the Kittenbus (2003), and Boro the Caterpillar (2018). Most of the films are written and directed by Miyazaki. On the second floor, kids aged 12 and under can climb on top of a plush replica of Totoro’s Cat Bus, or dive into tiny pools of soot gremlins.
The Ghibli Museum is located in Mitaka, just outside of Tokyo. Though Totoro the forest spirit (the museum’s mascot) mans the ticket booth, tickets must be ordered online in advance — they’re only around $10 USD.
Take A Virtual Tour
Despite its low ticket price and its tranquil, charming atmosphere, the museum is notoriously exclusive. Tickets are hard to get (even before there was a global pandemic) and must be purchased online in advance. Filming and photography are prohibited inside the museum, too, making the virtual tour on the museum’s YouTube page even more of a miracle.
Through over 24 videos, you can tour the grounds and exhibits of the Ghibli Museum. Start at the stunning fresco in the foyer and work through the Saturn Theater to the Straw Hat Café and the towering central hall. Even the bathrooms showcased on the tour are delicately decorated and lovingly wallpapered.
Some of the videos feature interviews with museum staff, too, though these are in Japanese with no subtitles. Among these are three conversations with longtime Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki for his 72nd birthday.
Through the tour, you can browse original concept art, storyboards, and manga pages. One video includes sketches of the Ghibli Museum and a miniature of the museum itself.
The exhibits are mostly empty in the videos, which makes for serene tableaus that seem straight out of a Miyazaki movie. But while it’s nice to appreciate the artwork and exhibit design virtually, there’s so much to the museum that you cannot experience from home.
Many of the exhibits, including the art director’s studio and the “A Boy’s Room” space, are tactile environments, where you can pull books off shelves to read or flip through illustrations on tables — like little scavenger hunts to search for gems of Ghibli designs and original artwork. Beyond the exhibits, in the souvenir shop, you can find museum-exclusive merchandise not shown in the virtual tour. And then, there’s the food.
Dining at the Straw Hat Café is an anime foodie’s dream come true. There, you can get an original “Valley of the Wind” beer, a collaboration between the museum and local microbrewery Dairy Kingdom Oratche. The café also stocks huge tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) sandwiches, Kiki-themed chocolate cakes, and a breakfast platter recreating the bacon and eggs from Howl’s Moving Castle.
Additionally, the short films screened in the museum are not available to watch anywhere else, making visiting the museum a matter of completionism for all die-hard Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki fans. Besides the exhibits, the food, and the films, there’s also the gentle, relaxing atmosphere of the Ghibli Museum: Miyazaki intended it to be a space for curiosity, reflection, and enrichment, and only so much of that mood can be communicated virtually.
Conclusion
If the Ghibli Museum tour isn’t enough, Google Arts & Culture features free and thorough interactive virtual tours of hundreds of museums and cultural sites. But for cinephiles and anime enthusiasts, a virtual visit to the Ghibli Museum seems like the perfect respite. Those eager to buy tickets to see it in person may not get the chance for some time — meanwhile, Ghibli fans can enjoy the entire studio’s oeuvre streaming on HBO Max.
It might be worth waiting several years before visiting, anyway — a Studio Ghibli theme park is beginning construction this year, to be housed at Japan’s Aichi Commemorative Park, and it’s supposed to open in 2022. Until then, the virtual tours of the museum can serve as rare looks into a secretive, restful, Ghibli-themed destination, like a quiet forest spirit’s grove just off the beaten path.
What would you like to see most at the Ghibli Museum? Or have you been in person? Comment below and let us know.
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