Do You Know There Is A Ghibuli Studio Movie Based On Modern History Of West Tokyo?

Studio Ghibuli is a famous Japanese animation company which is now well-known internationally. Many of their movies are showing beautiful nature which the directors referred to views in Japan. What's more, West Tokyo area was used as the settings for some of them. To be specific, the movie “Pom Poko (1994, directed by Isao Takahata)” was created based on the modern history of Tama area of West Tokyo. 

During Japanese high-rate economic growth time in 1960s, There was a big project of housing development came up on a part of Tama area which spreading over Hachioji City, Tama City and Machida City partially. It was to cope with the population growth in the center of Tokyo at that time. The land was originally a typical semi-natural area called “Satoyama” that has a good mix of farm fields and nature.

The movie "Pom Poko" is about animals living in the forest, specifically Japanese raccoon dogs (Tanuki), and how they tried to fight against the human being's large-scale development. The idea of using the animal came from the fact that people in old times believed Japanese raccoon dogs and foxes had some magical power to change themselves into other shapes. It's a really good movie to see the situations at that time and think back to city developments include mass constructions. Worth to watch!

The housing area developed with the project was named "Tama New-town". The name got faded in these years, but the area is still one of the major residential areas in Tokyo. 

Inside of the "Tama New-town" area, there is a local park called Nagaike Park located between Horinouchi Station and Minami Osawa Station in Hachioji City. The park includes a couple of ponds and thickets that are reminiscent of the area before the mass housing development in 1960s.

Actually, the Nature Center at the park has some original paintings of the movie and a stuffed Japanese raccoon dog (Tanuki) as you can see in the photos above. The paintings are displayed whenever there are no special exhibits. You can enjoy the beautiful works drawing views of “Satoyama”, old-fashioned semi-nature area, there!