VR firefly squid let a Japanese museum show its star attraction all year round

The Hotaruika Museum in Namerikawa, Toyama is devoted to firefly squid, but its live displays run only about ten weeks a year, leaving ten months without its main attraction.

VR and AR exhibits that let anyone touch, walk beside and watch mass-stranding firefly squid in any season — the deep sea made walkable.

Ishimura studied the squid in the museum's back rooms and on night beaches, rebuilt them faithfully in Unreal Engine, validated a special exhibition with about 500 visitors in 10 days, then made 'VR Firefly Squid' and 'AR Net Fixed' permanent — the first museum installation of the KAT VR walking device.

Off-season first-timers touched the squid in VR without resistance; the permanent installation drew coverage from commercial TV, NHK, newspapers and variety shows, and was still generating media attention three years on.

The Firefly Squid Museum in Namerikawa, Toyama — opened in 1998 and the only facility focused on the creature — could display live firefly squid only from March 20 to the end of May. For the other ten months it made do with bioluminescent plankton, giant isopods and garden eels, while visitors arriving for the star attraction kept asking, 'Aren't there any firefly squid?' Visitor numbers swung hard between the on-season and the rest of the year.

Ishimura Takuya, then a plumber who had taught himself Unreal Engine, built a prototype after a friend suggested showing the squid's mass strandings — and talked his way into the museum. Director Kobayashi's first reaction was 'This isn't a real firefly squid,' so Ishimura went deep: hours watching the tanks in the back rooms, nights on the beach, city council minutes, specialist books. The faithful result — water release, bioluminescence, arm movements — convinced visitors ('I couldn't believe it was artificial'): about 500 tried it in 10 days, some 300 questionnaires came back.

With the city's tourism division and local squid enthusiasts, the exhibits went permanent: 'VR Firefly Squid' lets visitors touch the squid by hand tracking and walk the deep sea on a KAT VR treadmill — chosen for safety, motion-sickness resistance and publicity — while 'AR Net Fixed' adds augmented reality viewing. Ishimura's account at XR Hub Kaigi Osaka 2026 frames the arc as a personal project that grew into civic collaboration because, in his words, 'just being interesting won't change people's behavior or get you a budget.'

The museum had a structural problem XR fit exactly: firefly squid are not farmed and live displays are limited to the fishing season, so the only way to show them off-season was simulation.

Ishimura grounded himself in the local context — council minutes, history books, back-room observation — until he could stand on equal footing with the experts judging his work.

The director's skepticism ('this isn't a real firefly squid') forced a fidelity bar that made the experience persuasive to locals who grew up with the real thing.

The permanent exhibit inverted the usual display logic: instead of visitors looking at exhibits, VR made visitors the subject walking the squid's world, which the team saw as VR's unique appeal.

A demo persuades differently once the listener owns the problem: hand the headset over, and the director doesn't see a hobbyist's toy — he sees his ten empty months solved.

The permanent installation has run for roughly three years with sessions capped at five minutes and an attendant always present — limits learned the hard way after one engrossed child ran into a wall and an 80-year-old woman once walked the seabed for 20 minutes straight. A donation from the family of the mayor who built the museum gave the team a sense of carrying nearly 30 years of history, and the exhibits continue to be updated and covered by national media.