THE JAPAN NEWS

 

The Yomiuri Shimbun

To better accommodate foreign visitors who are fans of Japanese anime, Tokyo’s Suginami Ward is expanding its efforts to provide multilingual services at the Suginami Animation Museum.

The ward is home to about 70 anime production companies such as Sunrise Inc., which produced “Kido Senshi Gundam” (Mobile Suit Gundam). The ward government set up the museum in 2005, aiming to make anime a major attraction for promoting tourism. The museum offers information on topics such as the production process and history of anime.

Although the number of foreign visitors is increasing every year, the museum has previously only provided Chinese and English explanations in some of the exhibition sections. It has even advised on its website that foreign visitors bring an interpreter.

To rectify this problem, the ward has decided to create audio guide services in English, Chinese and Korean, with the hope of making them available in April or shortly after. The ward government has further earmarked ¥7.8 million in its draft budget for the next fiscal year for the introduction of tablet PCs equipped with translation functions.

According to the ward’s industrial promotion center, the number of foreign visitors to the museum, which was 906 in fiscal 2011, hit a record high of 3,845 in fiscal 2014. The number for fiscal 2015 so far has already surpassed that of fiscal 2014. The museum hopes that making multilingual services available “could offer foreign visitors chances to learn about Japanese anime more deeply.”

The museum plans to host a talk show on Saturday, the anniversary of the museum’s opening, with anime directors Hiroshi Sasagawa, who produced “Hakushon Daimao” (The Genie Family), and Tsutomu Shibayama, who directed the “Doraemon” movies.