Kyoto International Manga Museum Audio Guide

Kyoto International Manga Museum: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Kyoto International Manga Museum

   Welcome to the Kyoto International Manga Museum, known in Japanese as Kyoto Kokusai Manga Myujiamu, in Nakagyo Ward, in the heart of Kyoto. Here is the twist: you are not stepping into a glass-and-steel gallery. You are walking into a former primary school, and it is the largest manga museum in Japan. The museum opened in 2006 as a joint project of Kyoto City and Kyoto Seika University. It works as a museum and a library at once. It collects, preserves and exhibits manga, and it also carries out research on manga culture. Today it holds about 300,000 items, and roughly 50,000 manga volumes are there for you to pick up and read, almost anywhere in the building. Over the next few stops, we will look at the school that came first, the buildings that survived, the collection inside, and the small details that make a visit feel like a day in a very unusual classroom. Practical pointers come along the way, too. Settle in, and let us begin.

2. 02

   Kyoto International Manga Museum: A School Before a Museum

   Before this was a place for comics, it was a place for children. Soon after the Meiji Restoration, Kyoto founded neighborhood primary schools with donations from local volunteers. Tatsuike Primary School was one of them, and it opened in 1869. For about 126 years it taught the children of the district, until school districts were merged in 1995 and its history came to an end. Then came the question of what to do with three early Showa era school buildings that were still standing. The answer arrived in 2006, when they were reborn as a museum devoted to collecting, preserving and displaying manga, and to studying manga culture. The idea itself has an interesting origin. Kyoto Seika University wanted to safeguard and make good use of valuable manga materials, and it approached Kyoto City with the idea of a manga library. The museum was founded as a public and private partnership. Even the university's role shows in the building today: the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoons and Comics has its office here.

3. 03

   Kyoto International Manga Museum: Architecture of the Modernist Era

   Look closely at the buildings, because they are part of the exhibition. The museum is made up of three structures: the main building, built in 1929, the north building, built in 1937, and the auditorium and gymnasium, built in 1928. They have been renovated and joined together, but they are otherwise largely untouched. That means you can still enjoy the creaky corridors and the tiled staircases, and savor the elegant, slightly extravagant atmosphere of the Modernist era. In the main building, the stairwell once served a reception room for distinguished guests and the staff room, so you are climbing stairs that schoolteachers and visitors used almost a century ago. Then there is the old schoolyard. It has been laid with lawn, and you can read out there too. Imagine settling onto the grass with a manga volume, in the very place where children once ran around at break time. It is one of the most relaxed corners of the whole museum.

4. 04

   Kyoto International Manga Museum: Collections, Phoenix and Portraits

   Now to what fills those rooms. The collection reaches back to caricature prints of the mid Edo period, and includes magazines from the Meiji era, postwar rental books, today's popular series, and works from overseas. When the museum opened, about 200,000 items had already gathered, mostly donated by individual collectors and by bookstores that had once run rental book shops. The collection has kept growing since, to about 300,000 items. The second floor holds the permanent exhibition, with displays on the history of manga and on manga from around the world. Keep an eye out for the museum's symbol, the Phoenix, or Hi no Tori, from the work of Osamu Tezuka. This sculpture was made by Mitsuaki Sudo, a Kyoto sculptor of Buddhist statues, and its eyes are set with plates of crystal. There is a playful corner too, where manga artists draw portraits of visitors. Overseas travelers often take one home as a souvenir for themselves. A practical note: photography and video of the exhibits and books inside are not allowed, out of respect for copyright.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off at Kyoto International Manga Museum

   Around 300,000 people visit each year, and about one in 10 comes from abroad. That tells you something: a story told in panels, drawn by hand and read on a school staircase, travels very well. As you wander, try a few little experiments. Notice where the old school architecture meets the shelves. Choose a volume you have never heard of, and read it somewhere unexpected, perhaps out on the lawn. And ask yourself how a primary school opened in 1869 came to hold the story of manga from the Edo period to today. The more you look, the more the building has to say.