A Manga Museum Holding the Most Originals in the World

Yokote Masuda Manga Museum, located in Yokote, Akita Prefecture, was the first art museum in Japan to focus on manga originals. Since its opening in 1995, the museum has offered permanent and special exhibits of originals, and has widely delivered information on the alure of manga originals. And after finishing large-scale renovations that began in 2017, the museum re-opened in May 2019. The reopening was met with the appointment of Takao Yaguchi （1939 -2020） , a local manga artists from Akita Prefecture known for Fisherman Sanpei, as honorary director.

At the reopening of the museum, Yaguchi said, “To manga artists, manga originals are like our children, something we have creates while pouring our hearts out.” Originals are full of the artist’s spirit, something that isn’t reflected in printing. However, up until recently, value has not been given to manga originals in Japan, and preservation and maintenance have been neglected. If this doesn’t change, manga originals may be scattered and sent overseas just as woodblocks were in the past. Taking notice of this concern, Yokote’s Masuda Manga Museum has used the reopening as a chance to start work in earnest on properly preserving manga originals and archiving these along with digital copies, as well.

Manga Storage to Pass On and Protect Originals

The Manga Kura Exhibition preserves, maintains, and exhibits enormous originals. Currently, it houses approximately 40,000 manga originals from over 180 manga artists from within Japan and around the world. The room can store up to 70,000 originals.

But why is the word kura or “storehouse” used? Home to this manga museum, the Masuda-cho area in Yokote is located at the confluence of the two highways, and has been a distribution base for people and goods since before the Edo period. The town, lined with shops that feature beautiful storehouses known as uchigura (literally “internal storehouse”), conveys a sense of the prosperity of the past even today. The modern kura storehouse that has been born out of this Town of Storehouses, selected as a nationally important preservation district of historic buildings, is the Manga Kura.

The concept for the Manga Kura is for a charming storehouse. There are many drawers lining the glass-sided storehouse. A certain temperature and humidity level can be maintained 24 hours a day via the climate control system. This maintains the optimum environment for preservation.

You can take a look into the work of archiving manga originals in the attached Archive Room, where manga originals are digitalized through high resolution scans and interleaf paper is placed between two originals to prevent oxidation. You can witness the place that connects the culture of manga with the future while also enjoying the way in which manga originals are preserved.

Digitalized manga originals can be searched for and pulled up on a large touch panel display. By making the manga originals on screen bigger, you can take a closer look at delicate pen strokes, which could also be described as the breath of the artist.

The drawer system is noteworthy, as well. You can read all the manga originals from a single chapter by opening the cabinets in order, starting at the top. It is a new experience to be able to use the originals to re-examine manga that was previously read in magazines or in standalone books. You’ll be surprised by the different impression it leaves.

Aiming for a Museum without a Complete Form New Discoveries and Encounters Every Time You Visit

Manga becomes more interesting the more you know. Manga originals and panels resembling manga panels are on display on the walls of the Manga Culture Exhibit, offering fun and a chance to deepen your understanding of manga culture. You can learn about manga culture and the manga creation process while feeling like you are reading a manga.

A single beech tree stands in the Permanent Exhibit, made up of two floors. This tree is the symbol of the museum, and is also part of an imagined landscape meant to call to mind the days of childhood when visitors were engrossed in manga. Well-known famous manga and scenes from manga originals are on display along the ramp that encircles the tree and leads up to the second floor. Together with the exhibits on the second floor, the manga originals of over 180 manga artists are regularly rotated and put on display.

The goal for Yokote’s Masuda Manga Museum is to be a museum without a complete form. You can find new discovers and encounters each time you visit.

Along the hallways, on the walls, and in every space, there is plenty of creativity with exhibits and devices meant to make you feel as if you’ve fallen into the world of manga.

For example, what first catches your eye upon entering the museum is the 10-meter tall, 7-meter wide Manga Wall. The masterpieces of Takao Yaguchi and other representative Japanese manga artists greet visitors with overwhelming power, inviting visitors in to the world of manga all at once.

Numerous famous scenes and resonating quotes from manga are on display as speech bubbles along the Famous Quote Road in the second floor hallway. This is a spot where you’ll reflexively want to snap a photo.

There are chairs and spaces where you can read manga lying down in the Manga Library, which features approximately readable 25,000 manga, and it’s a place that you could easily spend the day in. In addition to featuring talked-about manga, the Library also runs exhibits of manga originals by manga artists from outside Japan and more. It’s great to be able to read a manga right away that peaked your interest when seen at an exhibit here.

The Manga Café is also full of unique devices. The blank panels on the walls are gradually filled with pictures drawn freely by visiting artists, and patrons can enjoy meals and sweets surrounded by these fresh drawings. There is plenty of playfulness, too, with menus created in collaboration with the special exhibits, serving tables designed with quotes from manga, and more.

Takao Yaguchi, a Manga Artist Representing Akita Prefecture, and the Manga Kura’s Collection

Through its exhibitions, the Masuda Manga Museum also works to display the works of artists from Akita Prefecture in the hopes that visitors will become more familiar with the prefecture and will take pride in their own hometowns.

Takao Yaguchi is one such representative artist who is also the honorary director of this manga museum. Born in Akita Prefecture, he transitioned from being a bank employee to being a manga artist. Set in his own hometown of Masuda, Yokote City, he warmly portrayed the relationship between beautiful nature and people, and "Fisherman Sanpei" caused a fishing boom all over Japan and was made into a TV animation and live-action movie.

Roughly 42,000 manga originals of Takao Yaguchi are stored in the Manga Kura. You can fully appreciate the world of his works with people living naturally, drawn with sweeping pen strokes, including Nagamochi Udako and Matagi Retsuden, as well as his masterpiece, Fisherman Sanpei.

It could be said that Fisherman Sanpei was a landmark in fishing manga, and it was serially published over a ten year period from 1973 in Weekly Shōnen Magazine (Kodansha). In it, Sanpei Mihira, a young boy who passionately loves fishing, challenges himself to a variety of fishing all over the world.

Nagamochi Udako was published in the monthly Garo and was the work that triggered Yaguchi’s professional debut. He resigned from the bank one year after this work of persistence, which he completed himself, filling in all the ink and using white-out for all the mistakes. This began his journey on the path toward becoming a manga artist.

Matagi Retsuden is a story based on the Matagi, a group of hunters spoken about in Akita since ancient times. Matagi words are used throughout the story, and it is a valuable work communicating the dying Matagi culture today.

Yaguchi hopes that this manga museum will become a “mecca” for manga.
“Children, who have come to believe that manga are printed, will encounter manga originals for the first time. In doing so, they will be surprised at the great differences compared to printed manga, leading to knowledge of how great the originals are. This will lead them to want to see more. People want to know more about the world ahead of them.”

There are other manga artists from Akita Prefecture whose manga originals are kept in the large-scale storage of several tens of thousands of works at the museum: Yoshihiro Takahashi, known for Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin; Goseki Kojima, who created Lone Wolf and Cub; Naki no Ryū’s Junichi Nojo; Shigeru Tsuchiyama, who left behind many manga about food, including Kuishinbo!; female manga artist, Akiko Higashimura, who gained exposure with Princess Jellyfish, Tokyo Tarareba Girls, and more; Yoshimi Kurata, who set the stage for human-interest manga to bring people’s hearts together, including Aji Ichi Monme; Takao Saito, a symbolic master of manga culture who was a champion of the graphic novel and who produced many hits, including Golgo 13; and Naoki Urasawa, a pioneer of the next generation who has continued to come up with innovations in manga with Yawara! , 20th Century Boys, and more.

Manga Unites Local History and Tradition – Urban Development Through Manga

There are no other places in Japan where you can view the manga originals of this many artists. The museum’s preservation technology has also been evaluated highly within Japan, and the museum is noticed as a facility playing a large role in the passing on of the manga culture of Japan. In Yokote City, manga originals are thought of as resources for tourism while also being understood as important cultural resources in the region, and progress is being made on Manga-driven Urban Development that aims to bring in tourism and revitalize the region, centered around the Masuda Manga Museum.

A multilingual voice guide service using smartphones was made to create opportunities to visit the Masuda area and to increase accessibility in the area. This service offers the history of the Masuda townscape and information on the uchigura, in addition to explanations about the history of the establishment of the manga museum and an overview of its buildings, all in Japanese, English, and Chinese.

Effort is also being put into offering distinctive education that can only be done because a manga museum exists. The city offers the manga museum classroom and the Yokote City Future Manga Artist Discovery Magazine Creation Project for elementary and middle school students in the city. Getting to know the manga museum and manga culture is leading to the creation of civic pride.

Through uniting local history and tradition with manga, entirely new allure has been created in the Masuda area. The presence of the manga museum will surely encourage the area more and more in the future.

Power and beauty, felt because it is genuine. The passion and persistence of artists that is incorporated into their work. Through encountering manga originals, we want to see more of what lies ahead, and want to know more about the world ahead. We can meet that manga again at Yokote City’s Masuda Manga Museum. And we can also remember again that sense of excitement that we had forgotten.