- Kyoto’s new Nintendo Museum showcases video game history
- Features consoles, artefacts, and interactive exhibits
- Tied to Japan’s cultural export strategy, “Cool Japan”
Traditionally, travellers to Kyoto come for momijigari in October, when the fall leaves are turned into the city’s beautiful parks. This autumn, however, there is a new attraction: a Nintendo Museum.
The new attraction, which debuts on Wednesday, can best be described as a church of video game nostalgia. Upstairs, Nintendo’s several video game consoles, ranging from 1983’s Famicom to 1996’s Nintendo 64 and 2017’s Switch, are carefully displayed alongside their most renowned games. Visitors can also see toys, playing cards, and other artefacts from the Japanese company’s pre-video-game past, which dates back to 1889 when it was founded as a hanafuda playing card factory. Downstairs, interactive exhibitions use comically large controllers and floor-projected playing cards.
The museum, located on the site of the video game company’s former manufacturing base in Uji, a 20-minute train trip south of central Kyoto, is anticipated to welcome up to 2,000 visitors per day. Tickets, which are issued through a lottery system and cost 3,300 yen (£17) for an adult, sell out three months in advance. When it first opened in 1969, Nintendo’s Uji Ogura plant produced the toys and playing cards that were the company’s primary revenue streams at the time. It served as a customer service centre for console repairs until 2016. The structure is far from Kyoto’s other tourist attractions: the suburban town that surrounds it has been remodelling its train station in preparation for a slew of visitors dressed in Mario caps.
Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s creative genius and inventor of the Mario and Zelda series, was a frequent visitor to this location when it was still a functional factory in the 1970s and 1980s. “This is a place of memories,” he stated during a news conference held last week during the museum’s preview. We were thinking about how to preserve it, and then it occurred to us: why not turn it into a museum?” Our old headquarters in Toba-kaido was one of the choices [for a museum site]. Still, we thought that [Uji] would be more convenient for transportation, and the location has since deteriorated significantly. We aimed to revitalize the neighbourhood where our initial plant was located. We want to collaborate with the local community to create [the museum] so that the locals do not dislike it.”
Visitors receive ten virtual pennies per visit to spend on the interactive exhibitions. A neighbouring hanafuda workshop, located over a cafe serving bespoke burgers, teaches clients how to make their own Japanese playing cards. Given Nintendo’s famed secrecy regarding its creative process and corporate secrets, it is probably unexpected that there is no information about how any of the games or platforms on exhibit were created or who was involved in their development. Only a small exhibition of factory prototype controllers provides a brief glimpse behind the curtain.
This museum is one of Japan’s increasingly popular video game tourist spots. For decades, foreign video game fans have made the journey to Tokyo’s “geek mecca” of Akihabara, which boasts overcrowded electronics stores, once-great arcades, retro game shops, tucked-away arcade cabinet experts, and a variety of manga and anime cafes. However, there is now the Super Nintendo World theme park at Osaka’s Universal Studios, the world’s third-most-visited theme park, as well as restaurants in every major Japanese city based on popular games like Kirby, Monster Hunter, and Final Fantasy. A Pokémon theme park is also planned for Inagi, Tokyo.
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“Companies like Nintendo are hugely important for Japan’s cultural exports,” said Gearoid Reidy, a Bloomberg Japan contributor. “These cultural exports and tourism establish a symbiotic relationship; tourists visit Japan, possibly in part because they are intrigued by, say, Nintendo. Over time, they absorb new ideas and bring them home, such as the popularity of ramen in recent decades.
“Firms like Sega and Sanrio, as well as properties like Jujutsu Kaisen and Elden Ring, are what are now generating interest in the country. They are one of the primary causes behind the country’s sevenfold increase in immigration in just 20 years.”
The Japanese government’s new Cool Japan plan, revealed in June, seeks to triple the global market for video games, manga, anime, and other cultural exports during the next decade. However, for Nintendo, this museum is about preserving its business past. “I hope people will understand what Nintendo is through all of these past products,” Miyamoto told the press. “It would be a shame to have all of this gathering dust in a warehouse.”
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