Public domain manga is real, but it's old. In Japan, a creator's work is protected for 70 years after their death, and anyone who died in 1967 or earlier is already out of copyright. That puts Hokusai's Hokusai Manga (first volume 1814) and early twentieth century cartoonists like Kitazawa Rakuten and Okamoto Ippei in the public domain. It doesn't cover any manga you'd find on a bestseller list. Nothing by Tezuka, nothing from Jump, nothing from the last fifty years.
So the honest answer splits in two. There's a small shelf of genuinely free, legal manga and comics you can read and share today. And there's everything else, which is free only when a publisher decides to give chapters away. Below is what sits on that first shelf, where each title officially lives, and how to read the Japanese ones if you don't read Japanese.
Why recent manga can't be public domain yet
Japan moved from 50 to 70 years after death on 30 December 2018, when its copyright term was extended. The change wasn't retroactive: works whose protection had already expired by then stayed free, which is why 1967 is the cutoff year. Everyone who died in 1968 or later is now protected for the full 70 years. Osamu Tezuka died in 1989, so his work stays under copyright through the end of 2059.
The United States counts differently for older works. A work published in 1930 or earlier is in the US public domain as of 2026, because the 95 year term on 1930 publications ran out at the end of 2025. That's why early American newspaper comics are free in the US while a Japanese work from the same year might not be, if its creator lived past 1967.
One rule to keep: public domain in one country isn't public domain everywhere. Check the title against the country you're in, not the country that made it.
The public domain shelf, title by title
| Work | Creator | First published | Status | Official source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hokusai Manga (15 volumes) | Katsushika Hokusai (died 1849) | 1814 | Public domain | National Diet Library Digital Collections |
| Cartoons for Tokyo Puck and others | Kitazawa Rakuten (died 1955) | 1900s | Public domain in Japan | National Diet Library and museum archives |
| Collected works (一平全集) | Okamoto Ippei (died 1948) | 1929 | Public domain in Japan | National Diet Library Digital Collections |
| Little Nemo in Slumberland | Winsor McCay | 1905 | US public domain | Comic Strip Library, newspaper archives |
| Dream of the Rarebit Fiend | Winsor McCay | 1904 | US public domain | Comic Strip Library, newspaper archives |
| Pepper&Carrot | David Revoy | 2014 onward | Not public domain, free under CC BY 4.0 | peppercarrot.com |
Hokusai Manga is the one most people mean when they search this. It isn't a story with speech bubbles. It's fifteen volumes of woodblock sketches: people, animals, waves, gods, everyday gestures, published from 1814 and finished decades after Hokusai's death. It's the work that made the word "manga" famous, long before Japanese comics had speech bubbles, and the National Diet Library has scanned every volume.
Pepper&Carrot is the odd one out on purpose. It's a modern, manga influenced fantasy webcomic, and it isn't in the public domain. Its creator released it under a Creative Commons license that lets anyone read, translate and share it as long as they credit him. For a reader that works out the same: free, legal, and available in dozens of languages, Japanese included.
What "free manga" sites are not
The sites that come up first for "free manga" host current series uploaded without a license. That isn't public domain and it isn't free in any sense that matters to the people who drew it. The same goes for fan scanlations of old titles. A volunteer translation of a public domain comic is a new work with its own copyright, and a scan of a modern edition can carry new rights in its translation, lettering or layout. If the source is anything other than a library, an archive or the creator, assume it isn't public domain.
How to read the Japanese ones without reading Japanese
Hokusai's sketches barely need translating, a few captions per page at most. Okamoto Ippei and Kitazawa Rakuten are a different story: dense prewar Japanese, often hand lettered, usually set vertically. A general camera translator reads that left to right and returns a scrambled paragraph under the image.
A manga reader built around bubbles does better. Import the page, tap the text block, and the Japanese is replaced in place with English, so the drawing stays readable and you can tell which caption belongs to which panel. Prewar handwriting won't come out perfect with any tool, so treat it as a strong first read, not a scholarly translation.
Pepper&Carrot is the easier practice ground, and a good one if you're learning. Open the Japanese edition, read a page, then tap the bubbles you can't get and check the English. The story is simple, the art carries half the meaning, and you're reading real Japanese lettering rather than textbook sentences. The method is the same one we lay out in learning Japanese with manga.
Where Yomi's free library comes from
We had to answer this exact question before putting anything in Yomi's free reading shelf, because App Store rules require an app to hold the rights to every page it serves. What made the cut is the list above: Hokusai Manga pulled straight from the National Diet Library's own image service, Little Nemo and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend from the Comic Strip Library, and Pepper&Carrot with David Revoy's credit shown on the shelf. One title we tested was dropped because its license turned out to be conditional rather than truly free. That's the bar: if the rights aren't clear, it doesn't go on the shelf.
For anything newer, the free route is a publisher's own giveaway chapters, and the paid route is buying the volume. Where to find raw manga from outside Japan covers the stores that sell to overseas readers, and reading manga on an iPhone covers getting those files onto your phone. Once a page is yours, the manga translator reads it bubble by bubble.