The apartment where the godfather of Manga, Osamu Tezuka, spent his youth, will be rebuilt in Tokyo’s Toshima Ward.
The apartment, known as Tokiwaso, will be reproduced to in replica form, with its outside representing what it looked like at the time. The inside of the house will showcase reproduced handwritten drawings and other documents from that era.
Tokyo’s central ward city administrator intends on opening the apartment-style museum in March 2020. The attraction is hoped to be the centre of Japanese manga culture, appealing to domestic and foreign fans and tourists.
The revamped Tokiwaso will be situated in Minami-Nagasaki Hanasaki Parkm which is a three minute walk away from where the original apartment stood. The committee, which will be led by Manga artist Machiko Satonaka, will be established on 26 July and will include people involved in the original Tokiwaso as well as locals. The committee are expected to create a plan within the current fiscal year, with construction hoping to begin in fiscal 2018.
Yukio Takano, the head of Toshima Ward, is very excited about the project,
“Manga is the starting point of anime, and Tokiwa-so was the starting point of manga. I would like the new apartment to be a place for young people to learn about Japanese manga culture. I hope each one of the manga artists’ rooms will be recreated along with the atmosphere of their lives.”
The project will cost the Toshima government between 200 million yen and 300 million yen and will occupy 220sq meteres of the park and 420 sq meters floor space.
A number of Manga artists lived in Tokiwaso in the 1950s, including Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori and Fujio Akatsuka. It was demolished in 1982, but is still a landmark visited by fans today.
