Ishinomori Mangattan Museum (石ノ森萬画館) 石ノ森萬画館
The tsunami flooded the ground floor up to the ceiling: it reopened on 17 November 2012.
Ishinomori Shōtarō is one of the most prolific Japanese comic artists of the twentieth century, the creator of Cyborg 009 and Kamen Rider, and he grew up in this area: the city of Ishinomaki dedicated this museum to him, opened on 23 July 2001 on the river island of Nakase, which people in the city call ‘Mangattan’ because its shape recalls Manhattan. The building, about two thousand square metres over three floors, is by the Nihon Sekkei firm, based on a spaceship idea by Ishinomori himself: the outer hull is sheet steel and was built by a shipyard, because no building-materials supplier knew how to make it. The ground floor is partly free to enter, the first floor is the paid section, and the second houses the comics library and an open space. On 11 March 2011 the tsunami hit it head-on with about five metres of water; the museum stayed closed for twenty months and reopened on 17 November 2012, becoming one of the symbols of the city's recovery. By February 2021 it had passed three and a half million visitors.
Miyagi
Ishinomaki
