List of Girl's Mangaka and Examples of Visual Images

Twenty Major Mangaka Who Contributed to the World of Shojo Manga
(World War II to Present)

• Girl's Manga means manga that is depicted for girls and/or female readers.
• A Girl's Mangaka is a comic artist who creates manga for girls and women.
• Girl's mangaka are not always female. Some male mangaka also create girl's manga. In most cases these male mangaka started as girl's managaka early in their careers in the early 1950s and then switched to boy's manga.
• The following four male mangaka (Tezuka, Chiba, Ishinomori, and Matsumoto)are well known as great mangaka for boy's and male manga with their big successes with hit manga and animation, but Chiba and Matsumoto started their careers as girl's mangaka. Tezuka and Ishinomori also created great girl's manga.
• The following twenty major girl's mangaka (comic artists) from Japan are involved in this touring exhibition, and the following are examples from the show.
• The following visuals are all from the front page of the manga and/or cover page from the book form.
• The actual exhibition will be organized with front cover visuals (color) and content pages in sequential frames (black/white) to introduce the innovations in visual composition that were invented in girl's manga to depict psychological expression.

Girl's Manga by Male Mangaka

Osamu Tezuka (11/1928 – 3/1989), Osaka, Japan
He is well known as the God of contemporary Japanese manga and his influences on the manga world in Japan is immeasurable.

Ribbon no Kishi (1953)

Shotaro Ishinomori (1/25/1938 – 1/28/1998) Miyagi
He is a successful magnaka for boy's and girl's manga. Especially, he contributed to the development of a new composition in manga

Ryujinnuma (1961)

Tetsuya Chiba (1/11/1939), Tokyo
He is well knows as one of the most successful diverse boy's mangaka, but he started as a girl's mangaka.
Shimmkakko (1964)



Akira (Reiji) Matumoto (1938)
He is a great contributor to the development of Japanese manga animation which gave children hope and dreams.
Gin no Kinoko (1961)

Girl's Manga by Female Mangaka

• Girl's manga were first depicted by female mangaka in the 1950s. Watanabe, Maki, and Mizuno are the most successful girl's mangaka who visualized girls' dreams and desires in their graphic novels.
  

• Many female managaka followed after their successes as girl's mangaka and with the arrival of 24-gumi (female mangaka who were born around 1949 and contributed the development of the style of girl's manga), the world of girl's mangaka flourished with diverse subgenres of SciFi, Love, History, Adventure, and so on with visual inventions as graphic novels in 1970s.
  

• These female mangaka continue to depict and develop manga in response to readers'expectations and their own aesthetics as graphic/visual novelists.


• The movement still continues as the influences are spread all over the world as translated comics, animation, and other merchandise at the beginning of the 21st century.

Masako Watanabe (1929), Tokyo
She is one of the first female mangaka who contributed to the development of shojo manga after W.W. II. She is still highly active, depicting diverse themes through her manga. Click here for more info.

Garasu no Shiso(1969 - 71)

Miyako Maki (7/29/1935), Kobe
Her visual style highly infuenced to the girl's manga. The most popular doll in Japan, Rika, is created as an ideal image of girl based on her characters.

Maki no Kuchibue
(1960-63)

Hideko Mizuno (3/29/1939), Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi
She is the first female mangaka who successfully depicted majestic dramas based on historical and mythological stories.

Honey Honey no Stekina Bouken
(1966 - 67)

Machiko Satonaka (1/24/1948), Osaka
The diverse topics based on women's drama that she creates continue to impress female readers. She also contributed to the development of Lady's Comics for mature female readers.

Akiko (1986)

Riyoko Ikeda (12/18/1947), Osaka
Her magnificent love story based on the French Revolution became a big phenomenon in Japanese society in the 70s. This became a big hit play by Takaraduka (an all female performance group).

Versailles no Bara
(1972 - 73)

Suzue Miuchi (2/20/51), Oosaka
She is well known as a mangaka of long spectacle dramas. Garasu no Kamen (Mask of Glass), an ongoing serial manga started in 1976 about a girl who grows as an actress, is a good and great example of her work.

Illustration for the cover for a book of Asuka (1986)

Yukari Ichijyo (9/19/49), Okayama
When she made her debut on the girl's manga world, readers were impressed by the sophisticated visual techniques and images. Since then, she has maintained the high quality in her manga.

Suna no Shiro (1977 - 81)

Keiko Takemiya (2/13/1950), Tokushima
The theme of boy's love in her manga opened up a new field in girl's manga and it sparked off the YAOI (boy's love) boom in the comic market in Japan in the 80s.

Kaze to Ki no Uta (1976-84)

Moto Hagio (5/12/1949), Fukuoka

Her philosophical manga cover many themes and genres.Her created manga world continues to attract big fans regardless of genders.

Hyakuoku no Hiru to Senoku no Yoru (1977 - 78)

Ryoko Yamagishi (9/24/1947), Hokkaid0
One of the most successful stories among her many works is a historical drama based on one of the most famous historical Japanese, Shotokutaishi, who introduced Buddhism officially in Japan in the 7th century.

Hiizuru tokoro no Tenshi (1980 - 84)

Shio Sato (12/6/1950), Miyagi
Compared to other female mangaka, she does not produce many stories regularly, but she has many big fans due to her sophisticated use of the Japanese language in her mysterious manga world.

One Zero (1984 - 86)

Akimi Yoshida (8/12/56), Tokyo
She is probably the most famous female mangaka in the US with her NY gang story "Banana Fish" (translated into English), which contains elements of boy's love.

Banana Fish (1985 - 94)

A-ko Mutsu (2/15/54), Kitakyushu City
She was the originator and leading proponent of the "otometic" type of love story in girls' manga, a type of innocent, understated girls' love stor. She became the number one shojo mangaka in Ribbon in the 1970s.

Mariko Iwadate (2/8/57), Hokkaido
Her work has been called "Iwadate's World" due to the fantasy element of her gentle and soft pastel pictorial world and also with her cold observations of the realities of youth.

Fusako Kuramochi (5/14/55), Tokyo
Through her bittersweet coming of age manga, young readers can grow with the heroes and heroines in her stories. Adult readers experience the nostalgia of reliving their formative years.

Itumo Pocket ni Syoppan (1980)




Reiko Okano (6/24/1960), Ibaragi
She is one of the most successful female mangaka with her new interpretation s of Japanese history. She also challenges a new way of creating contemporary manga with traditional Japanese ink brushes.

Youmihenjyoyawa (1995 - present)

CLAMP is a collaborative group of four women mangaka: Satsuki Igarashi, Ageha Okawa, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Mokona.

As their roles vary with each project, their visual style can be dramatically different from project to project, and their work is surprisingly successful with a wide-ranging audience



Ichiko Ima
She is fond of the traditional Yokai in Japanese folk tales and often refers to these as well. In the story Hyakki Yakosho (100 Demons), the protagonist Ritsu, who can communicate with Yokai, gets involved in tough problems that Yokai ask him to solve.

Fumi Yoshinaga (1971) Tokyo
One of the most successful boy's love depicts the love between males, but weaves in more complicated plots. "I want to depict people who try very hard but don't make it. In boy's magazines people who try hard always win. That is not what I want.