The tsunami flooded the ground floor up to the ceiling: it reopened on 17 November 2012.
It stands on an island in the middle of the Kitakami River and from outside looks like a white spaceship resting on the water: the shape was the idea of Ishinomori Shōtarō, the artist who created Kamen Rider and Cyborg 009, and the designers built it as it was. Inside you can see the original pages of his comics, and the three floors take a good hour to go round. On 11 March 2011 the wave came into the ground floor and reached almost to the ceiling.
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.
ℹ️ Open all year from 9:00 to 17:00, with last entry half an hour before; on 31 December it closes at 15:00. Closed on Tuesdays, except in the holiday periods (from 29 April to 5 May, from 21 July to 24 August, from 24 December to 7 January, from 25 March to 7 April), when it also stays open on Tuesdays; and if a Tuesday falls on a public holiday, the closure moves to the first weekday after it. The official notice of 16 July 2022 sets 900 yen for adults, 600 for junior high and high school, 250 for elementary school, free under six, and with twenty people the price goes down. ⚠️ Japanese Wikipedia, however, gives a different price, 1,300 / 600 / 400: check the price at the ticket office. ⚠️ The museum's website announces a full closure for works from mid-October 2026 to early January 2027: if you are going in that window, check before you set out. ⚠️ The ticket went up on 20 March 2026: 1,300 yen for adults, 600 for junior high and high school, 400 for elementary school (official notice of 09/02/2026). The 900 yen you find around is not an old price: it is the reduced price during exhibition changeover periods. You pay for the first floor (video room) and the second, with the permanent and temporary exhibitions; the library on the third is free.
🚉 Ishinomaki · 15 min walk
Holidays in Japan? Plan them with us.Over 2,000 real places, a day-by-day itinerary.FreeOpen the map →Sources: mangattan.jp · mangattan.jp · ja.wikipedia.org · mangattan.jp
Nearby
Tashirojima, the cat island18 kmphoto by AMANO Jun-ichi · CC BY 3.0