The 13th Treasure TroveMANGA-ful
Be amazed by self-made “manga books”!
2025/10/9(thu) ～
Venue
2F In front of executive director's office
Closures
Every Wednesday
Click here for details on the opening calendar
Online Ticket
*Same-day tickets can be purchased at the ticket vending machine at the entrance on the day of the
*You can purchase the admission ticket at the ticket vending machine when you enter the museum on the day you visit, or you can purchase it online in advance.
Content
The Kyoto International Manga Museum has an ongoing mini exhibition series called “Treasure Trove MANGA-ful”, curated by the museum’s Executive Director Aramata Hiroshi, with the aim of “tracing forgotten ancestors of manga to search the roots of contemporary manga”. The “MANGA-ful treasures”, as coined by Executive Director Aramata, include manga that are “as good as buried in the trash unless someone finds them”, and their value is that junk is intrinsically fun.
From the greetings of the exhibition by Director Aramata
Hello, this is Director Aramata. Summer in Kyoto is hot and hard to bear!
But this installment of the Treasure Trove MANGA-ful exhibition is even more incredible. As museum director, I'm already so moved to tears, it's a problem.
Up until around the Showa 40s (late 1960s), there weren't many manga books around the world, and very few households could afford them. But children would read the manga they encountered here and there in newspapers and magazines, then discover how fun it was, and get hooked on it. It was a fun, new world, like YouTube is these days. So, we would borrow books from the few children who owned manga, and take turns reading them in class. Either that, or children would borrow books from rental bookstores. But since there were no photocopiers back then, if you wanted a copy for yourself, you had to copy it by hand or cut it out from newspapers or magazines. The children who were most enthusiastic about it were usually the ones who dreamed of becoming manga artists, and they wanted the materials close to hand as reference materials. These self-made clippings collections were called “scrapbooks,” and everyone had at least one.
Scrapbooks have been around for over 100 years and are truly the “crystallization” of the passion to collect things you love and the painstaking effort of editing them into a book by hand. I was never able to become a manga artist myself, but I've kept my scrapbooks as a precious treasure.
This museum also preserves many such scrapbooks in our collection. Looking through them now, they are fascinating historical records, which carry the atmosphere of many different eras. That's why I wanted to share them with everyone. Please, prepare to be amazed!
Kyoto International Manga Museum / “Treasure Trove MANGA-ful” Executive Director, Aramata Hiroshi
Organizers: Kyoto International Manga Museum / Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center
* Please note that the schedule and contents are subject to change.
