The exterior of the Kadokawa Culture Museum looks like an Iwakura

Kadokawa Culture Museum built in Tokorozawa Sakura Town

The Kadokawa Culture Museum in Tokorozawa was designed by Kengo Kuma. Kengo Kuma is the architect who designed Starbucks Coffee's Dazaifu Tenmangu Omotesando branch and Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo Midtown and has a strong image of design that makes extensive use of wood and other ancient Japanese materials. However, when looking at the towering building on the site of the Kadokawa Musashino Museum, I could not detect any Japanese image anywhere. I could not have recognized Kengo Kuma's design just by looking at the building.

If one were to forcefully connect the building's motif of a huge rock with a Japanese image, the keyword would be "Iwakura," a rock on which a deity dwells, as believed in Shintoism. If this object, with its distorted polygonal shape and bulging top, were to be found in a forest, even non-ancient people would feel something sacred. The fact that the building is covered with granite, which is also used for the base chamber of the pyramids and the sarcophagus, also adds to the mystique. It would be easy to believe that this is actually the sacred body of the Musashino Reiwa Jinja Shrine, which stands nearby.

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