A portrait illustration creation system includes a basic face photo data storage unit for storing a plurality of pieces of face photo data of basic faces, a basic portrait illustration data storage unit for storing a plurality of basic portrait illustrations, and an associating information storage unit for storing information which associates the basic face photo data with the basic portrait illustration data. The system also includes an approximate basic face photo extraction unit for recognizing, from face-photo-data-to-be-illustrated which is a photo of a face-to-be-illustrated of which a portrait illustration is desired to be created, the face-to-be-illustrated; performing matching between the face-to-be-illustrated and the basic faces represented by the plurality of pieces of basic face photo data stored on the basic face photo data storage unit; and extracting the basic face photo data having a high approximation degree.