Location Kyoto, Japan Collections Comics, Anime Visitors 264,309 (2013) | Type Art museum, Library Collection size 300,000 items (2015) | |
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Established November 25, 2006 (2006-11-25) | ||
The Kyoto International Manga Museum (京都国際マンガミュージアム, Kyōto Kokusai Manga Myūjiamu) is located in Nakagyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The building housing the museum is the former Tatsuike Elementary School. The museum opened on November 25, 2006. Its collection of 300,000 items includes such rarities as Meiji period magazines and postwar rental books.
Contents
The museum is a public-private partnership of Kyoto Seika University and the city of Kyoto. The city provided the building and land. The university operates the facility under the oversight of a joint committee.
Facilities
The museum is divided into multiple public zones. One is the gallery zone; another is the research zone; the third is the collection zone. There are permanent and special exhibits, a Tatsuike history room, a museum shop, and a kissaten. The 200 m of stacks hold 50,000 volumes in the "manga wall", which can be taken down and read freely.
There are various places for reading the manga in the collection – the halls have various seats, and there are some reading rooms, together with some outdoor benches. On the first floor, there is a room with children's manga for young children and their parents. In front of the museum, there is also a large lawn with artificial turf; on nice days young couples often lie on the lawn, reading manga from the collection.
Holdings
The museum holds many items of historical, as well as contemporary, interest. Highlights of the museum's collection include Japan Punch. Published by Charles Wirgman in Yokohama, it ran from the year Bunkyū 2 (1862) to Meiji 20 (1887).
Japan's first manga magazine was Eshinbun Nipponchi from 1874. The nation's first children's manga magazine was Shonen Pakku (established in 1907).
Operations
The Kyoto International Manga Museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Guests may enter until 5:30 p.m. It is open daily except Wednesdays (if Wednesday is a holiday, the closure moves to Thursday). It closes at the end of the year and remains closed until after the New Year holidays. The admission fee is 800 yen for adults, 300 yen for high school and junior high school students, and 100 yen for elementary students and younger. Special exhibitions within the museum may carry additional admission fees.
Access
The nearest station is Karasuma Oike on the Karasuma and Tōzai Lines of the Kyoto Municipal Subway. Karasuma Oike is the closest bus stop.