What is the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka?

The Ghibli Museum stands at the edge of Inokashira Park in Mitaka, Tokyo, and opened in October 2001. Miyazaki designed it against the model of the large exhibition museum: it is small, maze like, deliberately low and warm, with stained glass, hand painted ceilings and exhibits that reward looking closely rather than moving quickly. Photography is prohibited inside, a rule the museum defends as part of the experience, which also means its interiors are documented mainly through its own official publications.

The permanent displays teach animation itself: a zoetrope like installation of models in motion, rooms recreating the studio's working spaces with research material covering the desks, and displays on the films' food, skies and machines. A small cinema, the Saturn Theatre, shows short films made only for the museum, rotated across the year, which cannot be seen in cinemas or on disc in any complete form, a policy that makes the museum the sole venue for a real body of Ghibli work.

Rotating exhibitions occupy the special gallery, changing roughly annually and documented afterwards in official exhibition catalogues, which are the museum's main paper trail and a collecting field of their own. Past exhibitions have covered individual films, food in the films, and the studio's international poster art. The rooftop garden holds the five metre robot soldier from Castle in the Sky, the museum's most photographed object, permitted because it stands outdoors.

Practical facts for visitors: admission is by advance reservation for a set date and time through Lawson in Japan and official overseas channels, tickets are inexpensive in yen by design, and they sell out quickly for weekends. The museum shop, Mamma Aiuto, and the Straw Hat Cafe complete the visit, and exclusive goods sold only on site form the most clearly bounded category of Ghibli merchandise a collector can define.