Japan's 'Art of Manga' takes center stage at the de Young Museum.

Stories of goblins, ghosts, and vampires. Tales of an Edo empire run by women. A boy who travels the world in search of treasure after his body becomes rubber. A Roman architect time-traveling to a Japanese bathhouse.

These are all plots from manga, Japanese comic books or graphic novels. Translated as “pictures run riot,” the art form has billions of fans around the world.

With more than 600 works, including both original drawings and digital ones, Art of Manga at the de Young Museum demonstrates what a phenomenon it has become, with sales in the billions not just in Japan but around the world.

Yamazaki Mari(ヤマザキマリ) (born1967) ShueishaInc. (Publisher) THERMAEROMA Eredux (続テルマエ・ロマエ), 2024(©︎MariYamazaki/Shueisha)

This exhibition, running September 27th through January 25th, is the first in North America to showcase manga. Eleven artists are highlighted, and Beshi, a popular and slightly mischievous frog originally drawn by Akatsuka Fujio, pops up around the museum with helpful tips such as reminders to go to your right, the way that manga is read.

At the preview, Thomas Campbell, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, talked about the city’s relationship with Japan and the historic 1952 Treaty of San Francisco, which established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied forces following World War II. The year before the signing, the museum held a special exhibition of treasures loaned by the Japanese government.

After seeing a manga show at the British Museum in 2019, Campbell approached the organizer, Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, about working on a show specifically for the de Young and a Bay Area audience.

The director of England’s Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, Rousmaniere clearly has both a love for and a startlingly comprehensive knowledge of the art form.

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pin_description="" caption="ChibaTetsuya (\u3061\u3070\u3066\u3064\u3084) (born1939) SHOGAKUKAN Inc. (Publisher) A diary of a quiet life (\u3072\u306d\u3082\u3059\u306e\u305f\u308a\u65e5\u8a18), 2015\u00a0"Hinemosunotarinikki"" photo_credit="(\u00a9TetsuyaChiba/BigComic(Shogakukan)"] ChibaTetsuya (ちばてつや) (born1939) SHOGAKUKAN Inc. (Publisher) A diary of a quiet life (ひねもすのたり日記), 2015 "Hinemosunotarinikki"(©TetsuyaChiba/BigComic(Shogakukan)

She speaks enthusiastically of the two “pillar artists” displayed in the first room of the exhibition. One, Fujio (who passed away in 2008), she calls “the supreme gag artist.”

“It's quick jokes, it's fun, it's short, it's witty,” she says. “But his characters are so important that you go on the Tokyo Metro and you will see them in the advertisements.”

Rousmaniere calls the other artist in that gallery, Chiba Tetsuya, still drawing in his late 80s, probably the most important living manga artist. The exhibition has examples from his 40-volume work on golf, Stay Fine, in which the golf ball is used to show how to read manga—top to bottom and right to left.

She’s also enthusiastic about work that seems to jump off the page, such as with the art of Araki Hirohiko, known for JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which he’s been drawing since 1986.

“It's almost like a cinematographic experience, but it’s 2D,” she says. “I think it's because it affects you in different parts of your brain where you’re kind of completing the action.”

'Art of Manga,' de Young, 2025. (Gary Sexton)

Artist Yamazaki Mari was born in Japan but spent a chunk of her life living in other countries, including Syria, Egypt, and Italy, where she moved alone at 17 to study oil painting and Renaissance art history. Her manga includes Thermae Romae, the wordless Museum of Palmyra, and PLINIVS, about Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, who interested her because the time period in which he lived shared commonalities with Japanese culture, such as a belief in multiple deities and monsters.

Another artist included in the exhibition, Tagame Gengoroh, is known for his gay erotic manga as well as My Brother’s Husband, which has been made into live-action drama on Japan Broadcasting Corporation.

It’s not just the works themselves that are stunning—the exhibition’s design is also thoughtfully done, with drawings of mermaids, statues, and butterflies appearing in the corners of galleries.

Upstairs, there is a separate display of How Manga is Made: One Piece Only. Debuting in 1997, One Piece is the best-selling manga series ever, with a worldwide circulation of more than 500 million copies. The installation follows the art form from the hand of Oda Eiichiro, its creator, to the printing press.

There is also a reading room, which Rousmaniere calls key to the exhibition.

Araki Hirohiko (荒木飛呂彦) (born1960) Shueisha Inc. (Publisher) Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 5 Golden Wind (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険第５部黄金の風), 1995-1999(©HirohikoAraki&LUCKYLANDCOMMUNICATIONS/Shueisha)

“I'm really excited about this because manga really is what you hold in your hands. We’re showing the origins, the kind of the creation point, these drawings that start the whole process,” she says.

“What we see on the ground floor is the printing process and how this is made and distributed. And in the manga reading room, you can hold it in your hands, and we have all the artists represented. You can see what you like, you can see what you don't like, and then hopefully you'll want to come and see it again and again.”

There will also be multiple events held in conjunction with the exhibition, including a conversation with artist Tagame Gengoroh on gay manga on Saturday, October 25th, at the Timken Hall Auditorium, California College of the Arts; the symposium Manga As Art at the de Young’s Koret Auditorium on December 6th; and Art of Manga Cosplay Days on several Saturdays throughout the fall and winter.