Mangaka profile (6)

• Name: Miyako Maki
• In Japanese: 牧美也子
• Date of birth: July 29th, 1935
• Hometown: Kōbe (Hyōgo Prefecture)
• Debut: 1957 (22 years old), with Hahagoi waltz (Mother Love Waltz).
• Main works: Maki no Kuchibue (Maki’s Whistling), Shimai Futari (Two Sisters), Himon no Onna (The Woman of the Scarlet Crest), Seiza no Onna (Women of the Zodiac), Genji Monogatari (The Story of Genji), Akujo Bible (Bad Woman’s Bible).
• Awards: 3rd (1974) Japanese Cartoonists’ Association Award (for Himon no Onna), 1975 First Prize of the Montreal International Comic Contest (for Seiza no Onna, among other works), 34º (1989) Shōgakukan Manga Award (for Genji Monogatari).

Maki is a shy woman and did not let me take any picture or video of her. Instead, this is the cover of Maki no kuchibue.

Facts:

• She first worked as a bank teller, but she soon decided to try and be a professional mangaka.
• She is one of the first professional female mangaka. Only Sazae-san’s Machiko Hasegawa (debut: 1940), Masako Watanabe (debut: 1952) and Hideko Mizuno (debut: 1955) preceded her.
• She met Battleship Yamato (Starblazers), Captain Herlock and Galaxy Express 999’s Leiji Matsumoto at a mangaka gathering and they married in 1961.
• She spent her first years as a mangaka writing stories focused at little girls (shōjo manga), such as マキの口笛 Maki no Kuchibue (Maki’s Whistling), the story of a little girl who has lost her mother, lives with her sister (she’s not her real sister, though) and wishes to become a ballerina. Soon, she finds out that her real mother is a famous actress she deeply admires…
• The incredibly popular doll Licca-chan (by Takara, now Takara-Tomy) –the “Japanese Barbie” – was originally based on her illustrations, although she has never got any royalty from it.
• She was one of the first mangaka to propose stories aimed at an older female audience. “If there are now manga magazines aimed at adult men, such as Big Comic or Manga Action, why can’t there be manga magazines aimed at adult women?”, she thought in the late 1960s.
• She was very successful in the 70s and the 80s with comics for adult women such as 緋紋の女 Himon no Onna (The Woman of the Scarlet Crest), 星座の女 Seiza no Onna (Women of the Zodiac) and 悪女聖書 Akujo Bible (Bad Woman’s Bible).
• These kinds of works aimed at adult women were traditionally called レディースコミック “ladies comics”. However, since many erotic and porn stories were created under the “ladies comics” seal in the 80s and 90s, the term 女性向けマンガ “josei muke manga” (manga for women) was created. Internationally, these stories are known as josei manga.
• In the 1980s, Maki created one of the finest manga adaptations of Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th Century novel 源氏物語 Genji Monogatari.
• One of her hobbies is painting. She uses the traditional Japanese Nihonga method to create her dreamy, very beautiful works.
• In spite of her status as a shōjo and josei manga big master, she has been quite forgotten in Japan. Very few of her stories are in print right now. Only Maki no Kuchibue (the current edition has been completely remastered from the original magazines by Shōgakukan Creative) and Seiza no Onna (published by independent publisher Yoruhiro Pro) are available in the market. Hopefully, there will be a Miyako Maki revival in the next few years.

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