After stepping back into the past with tours of Kyoto’s historic sites and a night at Ryokan Nishiyama, Matt and I decided to take in something positively modern: The Kyoto International Manga Museum. Manga, which are like comics, are published as illustrated series, and represent a $3.7 billion industry that appeals to readers of all ages. Manga gained popularity after WWII but has its roots in pre-Meiji art and covers subject ranges from ninjas to schoolgirls to tennis. Manga is also closely related to one of Matt’s (and now my) loves, anime, because many of the manga series are also turned into the anime series we watch on TV and DVD. Says Matt “manga rules, but anime is better.” (This of course is a direct quote from an exclusive sit down interview with Dr. Langford).
The museum opened in 2006 in the former Tatsuike Elementary School and features galleries, research areas as well as a collection of over 200,000 volumes of manga. There were also indoor and outdoor reading areas where many people were sitting on benches or sprawled on bean bags and the lawn, reading manga from the museum’s collection. Some of the highlights of the museum were an exhibit that showed the process of transforming manga into anime and also a special exhibit of the work of Kawanabe Kyosai.
Kyosai was a prominent artist of the Edo and Meiji Eras. He paid particular attention to the human form as well as depicting politically charged scenes that critiqued the Japanese government. Often, his works were depicted in several frames or scenes, leading him to be credited as one of the forerunners of manga. Matt and I were thrilled with the pieces on display in the Kyosai exhibit and spent the most time here out of any area of the museum. We found his highly detailed work to be captivating and even irreverant at times and especially like the numerous works that contained skeletons and explosions. If you would like to take a look at some of Kyosai’s work, click here.
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