After the Ghibli Museum, we got back on the JR train and rode a bit further west to the Musashi Koganei stop. Along the way Nobutoshi pointed out that the station we passed through between this and the Mitaka stop was the Kichijoji station, the location where the Ghibli animators had Taku and Rikako, the two characters in I Can Hear the Ocean (Ocean Waves), meet each other.
Our next Ghibli-related stop was the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in the Metropolitan Koganei Park. This is a large open air museum where they have relocated building from the 19th and 20th century which are architecturally significant or representative. So what does this have to do with Ghibli and Miyazaki? Well in the first place, the indoor museum is currently hosting the exhibit on the artwork from Spirited Away that was showing last year at the Ghibli Museum. Just as at the Ghibli Museum, they wouldn't let you take pictures of the exhibit itself, so I don't have any to show here. However, you can see all the artwork on display in the book Exhibiting Animation (which is printed with both Japanese and English text). And if you want to buy the book, I would suggest going here.
Of course we spent nearly an hour pouring over all the amazing art there, Nobutoshi kindly translating a lot of it for us. So why would a museum about architecture be showing an exhibit about the artwork from Spirited Away anyway? Well part of it is that it is near Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki and the staff have sort of adopted it. The cute little caterpillar mascot they have was designed for them by Miyazaki.
And the entrance area to the museum has a lot of exhibits showing pictures of Miyazaki and the staff of Ghibli attending special ceremonies there at the museum. But the real reason for the connection is that this is the museum Miyazaki took his animators to see when they were designing the town and the backgrounds for Spirited Away.
For example here is the house belonging to Korekiyo Takahashi, a major political figure in pre-war Japan.
The house is very traditional (you have to take your shoes off to walk around in it) with tatami mats on the floors and low tables and cushions. But when you look out at the hallways that run around the outside of the second floor, they look kind of familiar.
(By the way, the little blocks with the bar between them are to keep you from actually walking out into the hall and were not part of the original house.)
Further down they have a group of stores arranged together. You can see here that the owners and their families would live in the second floor above the shop. They had examples of stores selling soy sauce, kitchenwares, stationery, paper umbrellas, and medicines and herbs. If this looks like the shops across the bridge from Yubaba's bathhouse, it's no accident.
And here is an old trolley line car that they used as their model for the railcar that Chihiro and her friends ride on to find Zeniba.
But the most interesting building, and the one with the closest ties to Spirited Away is this 1929 public bathhouse. Yubaba's bathhouse is derived from the original here, Miyazaki just added several more stories to it.
Here is a small enclosed garden next to the bathhouse (with the sliding doors leading out to it), similar to where Sen was pouring out the water when she first spoke to "No-Face".
And this raised stand is where the bathhouse attendant would sit, taking the customer's money and able to see into both the men's and the women's side of the baths at the same time. In Spirited Away they used this stand for the foreman giving out the tokens for the bath salts. If you've ever seen NieA_7 then you've seen this same stand in its traditional location in a bathhouse as it is here.
If you are interested there are some more photos of this (and text in Japanese) on page 130 of the Roman Album for Spirited Away. There is also a website in English (but without any pictures) about the Architecture Museum as well as a different website in Japanese (with pictures and the caterpillar mascot). Here is a part of their site with pictures of Miyazaki and "No-Face" posing by the trolley and the bathhouse. And none of this should be confused with the main Edo-Tokyo Museum in central Tokyo.
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