Ghibli Park Japan: A Producer’s Field Notes

Ghibli Park Japan offers a very different vision of themed entertainment. Producer and cultural researcher Kirill Oleshkevich shares field notes from Aichi, comparing Ghibli Park with the Ghibli Museum, Disneyland, and traditional theme parks.

Kirill Oleshkevich

8/28/20268 min read

This summer, one of the places I most wanted to visit in Japan was Ghibli Park. I had already been to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, so this time I had something to compare it with. And that comparison turned out to be much more interesting than I expected. Ghibli Park is not simply a larger version of the museum. And despite the word park, it is definitely not a Japanese version of Disneyland. It represents a very different philosophy of what an entertainment destination can be.

First: technically, it is not in Nagoya.

Ghibli Park is located in Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture, just outside Nagoya, on the grounds of the Expo 2005 Aichi Commemorative Park, also known as Moricoro Park. For international visitors, Nagoya is the natural gateway: there are direct buses from Nagoya Station, or you can travel by train and the Linimo line directly to the park. I actually find the location interesting.

Nagoya has a completely different identity from Tokyo or Kyoto. It is one of Japan's major industrial and transportation centers - practical, modern, strongly associated with manufacturing and the economic power of Aichi. And then, outside the city, you suddenly enter the worlds of Totoro, Howl, Kiki, and Princess Mononoke. There is something very Ghibli about that transition itself. The park also carries another layer of history: it occupies the landscape created for Expo 2005 Aichi. Rather than clearing the site and constructing a conventional self-contained theme park, the developers integrated Ghibli into an existing public park and its natural environment.

That was intentional. Goro Miyazaki has spoken about minimizing changes to the existing landscape, avoiding unnecessary tree removal and allowing the buildings to become part of the scenery rather than dominate it. That philosophy explains almost everything that follows.

A park that grew in stages.

Ghibli Park opened on November 1, 2022, initially with three areas: Ghibli's Grand Warehouse, Hill of Youth, and Dondoko Forest. Mononoke Village followed in November 2023, and Valley of Witches opened in March 2024, completing the five-area structure visitors experience today. The five areas are remarkably different.

Ghibli's Grand Warehouse.

This is the closest thing to the park's central cultural hub. It is a huge indoor space filled with exhibitions, production materials, recreated environments, children's areas, shops, food, photo opportunities and a cinema. You can sit beside No-Face on the train from Spirited Away, walk through environments referencing multiple Ghibli films, explore detailed exhibitions, and spend a surprising amount of time simply discovering small things. For me, this was probably the strongest single pavilion in the park. There is so much content that it almost functions as a park within the park. The official description itself calls it a space containing exhibitions, play areas, production materials, a café, shops and the Cinema Orion screening room.

Hill of Youth.

This area takes you primarily into the worlds of Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns. The World Emporium, the Cat Bureau and the retro-futuristic Elevator Tower create something closer to architectural storytelling than to an amusement attraction. You are not watching these places. You are entering them.

Dondoko Forest.

Here, My Neighbor Totoro becomes physical. The centerpiece is Satsuki and Mei's House, surrounded not by artificial theme-park scenery but by actual forest and landscape. There is also the large wooden Dondoko-do Totoro structure on the hill. And this is important: the forest is not a decorative background. It is part of the IP experience. Totoro without nature would not really be Totoro.

Mononoke Village.

Inspired by Princess Mononoke, this zone uses the landscape of a traditional mountain settlement, with Tatara-ba and structures referencing the Demon Spirit and Lord Okkoto. It feels intentionally less polished than a conventional fantasy theme park. Again, the landscape carries as much meaning as the architecture.

Valley of Witches.

For many visitors, this is probably the most immediately spectacular area. It brings together the worlds of Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle and Earwig and the Witch. There is Howl's Castle, Okino Residence, The House of Witches, shops, restaurants and a European-style townscape. This is perhaps where Ghibli Park comes closest to the visual language people normally associate with a major theme park. But even here, the emphasis is less on riding something and more on being somewhere.

The first attraction is actually getting a ticket.

There is one very important practical lesson. Plan early. Ghibli Park sells its major international day passes two months in advance, on the 10th of the month at 2:00 p.m. Japan time. Reservations are required, and visitor numbers are deliberately limited. And from my experience, this is not one of those attractions where you casually decide to go next weekend. Popular dates and entrance times can disappear extremely quickly. When tickets are released, you need to know what date you want and be ready. For a visitor, this is inconvenient. For a producer, however, it is fascinating. Scarcity is being used not simply to create demand, but to protect the experience. The official explanation for limiting tickets is that guests should be able to relax and enjoy the park rather than simply process through overcrowded attractions. That distinction matters. Many entertainment venues maximize attendance. Ghibli Park appears much more concerned with maximizing quality of presence.

It is large, and you are supposed to walk.

This surprised me as well. The five Ghibli areas are distributed across the much larger Expo 2005 park. So moving between them is part of the experience. You walk. A lot. And I actually liked that. There is space between fictional worlds. You leave one environment, walk through trees and open parkland, and eventually enter another. That creates something theme parks often try very hard to manufacture: a sense of journey.

There is also one particularly appropriate transport option. You can ride the APM Cat Bus, a low-speed Toyota mobility vehicle transformed, under Goro Miyazaki's supervision, into the Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro. It operates between Mononoke Village and Dondoko Forest. Of course, they could have used an ordinary shuttle. But why would Ghibli use an ordinary shuttle when it could make transportation itself part of the story? That is a small producer's lesson I loved. Infrastructure can also be content.

The Grand Warehouse where I could have stayed for hours.

Of all the areas, I spent particularly concentrated time in Ghibli's Grand Warehouse. From a producer's perspective, it is extremely well constructed because it serves several audiences simultaneously. A child can play. A casual visitor can take photographs with recognizable characters. A serious Ghibli fan can search for references. Someone interested in animation can study production materials. A collector can spend considerable time in the shop. And everyone can eat, rest, and continue exploring without breaking the thematic experience. This is effective audience segmentation without visibly separating the audience. Different visitors can experience the same building at completely different depths. That is difficult to design well.

Then I watched something genuinely special.

Inside the Grand Warehouse is Cinema Orion, a small screening room. Historically, it has screened the original Studio Ghibli shorts also shown at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. But I happened to visit at a particularly interesting time. Beginning July 8, 2026, the cinema premiered A Night in the Valley of Witches, a new 14-minute Studio Ghibli short directed by Goro Miyazaki and Akihiko Yamashita. It is the first original animated film created specifically around Ghibli Park itself. The story follows a new park employee who receives requests to repair buildings throughout Ghibli Park — only to discover increasingly strange things happening around those buildings. I loved it. But as a producer, I loved the idea behind it even more. Think about what happened here.

Originally: Film → audience → physical recreation in the park.

But now the process reverses:

Film → physical park → new film inspired by the physical park.

The adaptation has completed a circle. The fictional architecture became real architecture. And then the real architecture became animation again. That, to me, is sophisticated IP development. The park is no longer simply exploiting an existing catalogue of films. The park itself has become part of the canon-producing ecosystem. That may have been my favorite professional observation of the entire visit.

Ghibli Museum vs. Ghibli Park.

Having previously visited the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, the difference became very clear to me. The museum, which opened in 2001, feels intimate, concentrated, and almost handcrafted. It is about discovering animation. You move through a relatively compact environment filled with details, drawings, mechanisms, architectural surprises and the philosophy of how animated worlds are created. The museum feels almost like entering an animator's imagination.

Ghibli Park does something else. It takes that imagination and gives it geography. At Mitaka, you discover a world. At Ghibli Park, you travel through one. And because I had visited the museum first, I appreciated the park much more. I would not say one replaces the other. Actually, I would recommend both precisely because they perform different cultural functions.

And this brings me to Disneyland.

From a producer's perspective, I kept comparing Ghibli Park with the conventional theme-park model. Disneyland and, in a different way, LEGOLAND organizes much of the visitor's day around attractions. Ride. Queue. Ride. Show. Food. Another ride. Another attraction. There is a powerful rhythm to it. It is extremely effective entertainment engineering. The visitor constantly asks:

What do we do next? Ghibli Park often asks a completely different question: Where are we now? That is a profound difference. There are attractions and even some rides in Ghibli Park, particularly in the Valley of Witches, but the park is not fundamentally ride-led. Studio Ghibli itself has emphasized that the concept is a park rather than an amusement park, designed to coexist with the existing landscape.

You walk into Satsuki and Mei's house.
You inspect objects. You open drawers.
You look through windows.
You stand in a landscape.
You recognize a building.
You notice something hidden on a bench.
You photograph yourself inside a scene you have known for years.
The primary unit of entertainment is not the ride.
It is recognition.

Is that better than Disneyland? In some ways, yes. In others, absolutely not. Disneyland is much stronger at kinetic entertainment. If you want adrenaline, constant spectacle, large attractions, tightly managed entertainment density, and a day where something is always happening to you, Disney is almost impossible to compete with. Ghibli Park can feel slow by comparison. You walk considerable distances. Some areas are intentionally quiet. Weather matters. There are fewer conventional attractions. And I can easily imagine a visitor with only a casual knowledge of Studio Ghibli asking: “Is that it?” That is the weakness of the model. Ghibli Park requires something from you.
Memory.
Curiosity.
Attention.
And preferably familiarity with the films.
But that is also its strength. At Disneyland, the entertainment often comes toward you. At Ghibli Park, you have to move toward the story.

The producer's lesson.

This may be what interested me most. Ghibli Park does not try to convert Studio Ghibli into another entertainment brand. Instead, it converts the values of Studio Ghibli into an operating model. Nature matters - therefore, the park preserves the landscape. Walking matters - therefore, distance is not necessarily treated as a problem. Small details matter - therefore, discovery is rewarded. Food matters. Architecture matters. Craft matters. Silence matters. Nostalgia matters. The passage of time matters. Even the absence of a roller coaster becomes part of the brand. That is exceptional IP discipline. A weaker producer might have said: “We own Totoro, Howl, and Spirited Away. Let's build rides.” Ghibli Park seems to ask: “If Miyazaki's worlds actually existed, what would it feel like to walk through them?” Those questions produce completely different parks.

My field note from Aichi.

I went to Ghibli Park expecting a major Studio Ghibli attraction. I left thinking about restraint. In entertainment production, we often assume that bigger means more: more technology, more attractions, more screens, more spectacle, more stimulation.

Ghibli Park demonstrates another possibility. Sometimes immersion comes from giving the audience less — and allowing them to look more closely. A house can be an attraction. A forest can be an attraction. A bakery can be an attraction. A familiar object sitting quietly in the right place can be an attraction. And a walk between two fictional worlds can be part of the story. Having visited both the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka and now Ghibli Park in Aichi, I think I finally understand the distinction. The museum teaches you how Ghibli creates worlds. The park lets you practice living inside them. And perhaps that is why Ghibli Park should never try to become Disneyland. Disney has already perfected Disneyland.

Ghibli Park is interesting precisely because it is trying to perfect something else.