Japan is to be the site for a new Moomin theme park, although its exact location has yet to be determined.

Scheduled for a 2015 opening which will almost coincide with the 100th birthday of the late Moomins creator Tove Jansson, the park will feature her popular animated characters and fairy tales and join the existing Moomin World theme park at Naantali, Finland and a Moomin-inspired park elsewhere in Japan.

Moomin Monogatari, Ltd. will oversee the project, which is a joint venture by financial services company FinTech Global Inc. and Puuha International Oy, the Finnish playground equipment group.

The Moomin stories were first published in 1945 in Swedish by the Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson, with the nine Moomin books and various Moomin comic strips having since been adapted into several animations.

The subjects themselves are a family of white, roundish characters resembling hippopotamuses, who live in a house in Moominvalley.