“You already know I’m in a working trip in Japan for some days. I just arrived this morning and I decided to engage on a little vintage manga shopping spree to try to beat the jet-lag, as I need to be awake non-stop for some 35 hours (no, I wasn’t able to sleep on the plane *sigh*). Also, it’s possible this is the only day I end up having for this kind of matters, so here we go!”
Thus starts the new Tumblr page I’ve just created to host little comments, pictures and other stuff I don’t really think fits in here. If you’re interested on knowing what I bought today and at what prices, go read it!
Master of manga Kaiji Kawaguchi --you already know him after having read his profile-- offers here a great masterclass on how to draw a manga character from scratch. No more words, just the video:
Now, this blog will be left on hiatus for some two weeks. I have a working trip to Japan so I’ll not be able to upload more new content. I’ll not have much time left this time, but I already have some incredible interviews scheduled with other Masters of Manga. If you’re curious, I’ll be posting pieces of information and possibly pictures during my stay in Japan through the Twitter account and the Facebook page. See you soon, then!
Akira Maruyama worked for the long defunct shōjo manga magazine Shōjo Club during the 1950s and 1960s. He worked as editor and was in charge of some of the most prominent authors that worked for the magazine, such as Osamu Tezuka --the god of manga-- and he also discovered and nursed epoch-making mangaka like Shōtarō Ishinomori, Fujio Akatsuka and Hideko Mizuno.
Maruyama is also an expert on manga culture, especially shōjo manga that predates the Year 24 Group, that is to say, manga created between the release of Tezuka’s Ribon no Kishi (Princess Knight, 1953-56), the first shōjo story manga hit, and the appearance of Versailles no Bara (The Rose of Versailles, 1972-73).
This 20-year period is a kind of black hole for shōjo manga. There is not many information about the works created in that period, that tend to be criticized as “shallow”, “tear-jerking” and “clichéd”. In this incredibly interesting video, Maruyama tells us why this happened and what the pre-Year 24 Group shōjo manga was really like. Prepare to listen him talk about what “story manga” is, “harmful manga”, bonfires and uninformed critics.
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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