04 September, 2006

The international Library of Children's Literature --Kokusai Kodomo Toshokan / the Ueno park


Yesterday, September 3rd was the last Sunday of summer vacation, so Sis and Shige had wanted to go to the sea or somewhere fun place to do outdoor activity. But Sis had been knocked down by the flu till last Tuesday, so Shige decided to do a "quiet", "indoor" and "intelligent" activity for the last day of Summer.

The Internatinal Library of Children's Literature (ILCL) is a branch of the National Diet Library. There are bunch of books and audio visuals for Kid's. The audio visuals include the DVDs of the Nationak Geographic, CD-ROMs of old-time picture books, etc. Sis and Shige spent most of the afternoon of the day in there. It was a great time.


Interesting thing is the origin of the building of ILCL. It was founded as the Imperial Library in Meiji-era (1906). This building was modeled after the Newberry Library of Chicago (but finally 3/4 of building couldn't be built because of budgetary reasons. Meiji government had spent a lot of money for the war with Russia).
It has been designated as an important historical architecture by the Tokyo metropolitan government. In the year 2000, this library was reformed and reopened as a children's library.

Old style interiors are remaining.

The sign of door says "push then open".

According to the original plan, this building was the one side of the qudrate.


ILCL is located in the north end of the Ueno Park. In this park, There are many famous museum or art gallery like the National Science Museum, the Natinal Museum of Western Art, the Tokyo Natinal Museum.... but ILCL is not so popular. No crowd, clean, and calm. If you feel tired the crowd of the Ueno park, you'd better visit there.

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1 Comments:

Blogger Shige_d said...

Thank you, Kazu! Kana recovered flu completely. She had mumps (Otafuku-kaze) although she had got a mumps vaccination!
I've never been to Iwasaki residence, and I wanted to be there someday. Is Lee okey there? Really? OK! We'll try!
Regarding the Garden museum, that was the residence of Prince Asakanomiya, a great Art-Deco architecture.I love it.
The pamphlet says ILCL was the renaissance architecture, a little bit classical style. I like both!

12/9/06 15:43  

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