Kyoto International Manga Museum

The creation of the manga museum was proposed by Kyoto Seika University in April 2003. The project launch was announced by the Mayor of Kyoto City in December 2004 at a press conference. In October 2005, the Committee on the Use of Former Primary School Sites approved use of the former Tatsuike Primary School site for the museum. The museum's name and logo were determined in October 2006, and it opened shortly thereafter in November of the same year.

The museum is divided into a number of public zones. The Gallery Zone is open to the public and contains both permanent and temporary exhibition rooms. The museum also has a Research Zone, an Archive Zone, and community spaces. There is also a Tatsuike Memorial Room, a gift shop, and a tea room. The Wall of Manga, which visitors may freely access, is the main feature of the museum's collection. It contains approximately 50, 000 publications from the 1970s, most of which were donated from the rental bookstore Okubo Negishi Books. The Wall of Manga is divided by floors: the first floor features shonen manga, the second floor features shojo manga, and the third floor features seinen manga. There is also a children's library that includes approximately 3,000 picture books.

The museum features several permanent exhibits outside of its manga collection. These include a room of plaster casts of the hands of manga and anime artists who have visited the museum, an exhibition of 100 maiko illustrations by various artists, a hanging sculpture of Tezuka Osamu's Hi no Tori character, and an exhibition called "What is Manga?" that features influential manga published between 1912 and 2005. There is also a room dedicated to kamishibai, a traditional Japanese storytelling format that uses a combination of characterful narration and hand-drawn paper cards. Regularly held events include kamishibai performances that occur throughout the week, a manga studio event in which visitors can watch manga artists at work and pay for consultation on their own drawing skills, and a portrait corner where visitors can have their portrait drawn by manga artists.

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 900 yen for adults, 400 yen for high school and junior high school students, and 200 yen for elementary students and younger, with discounts for large groups. Special exhibitions within the museum may carry additional admission fees.

The nearest station is Karasuma Oike on the Karasuma and Tōzai Lines of the Kyoto Municipal Subway. Karasuma Oike is the closest bus stop. The museum has a bicycle parking lot with a capacity for approximately 80 bikes or small motorcycles. There is no space for visiting cars to park, but there are metered parking lots nearby.

Liana Smale was the one millionth visitor to the Kyoto International Manga Museum on August 26, 2010. To celebrate this milestone, she was given a commemorative gift by "Mamyu," the museum's mascot. The 12-year-old Los Angeles native was visiting Japan with her family. In an interview, Smale said she and her friends were big manga fans.