Ueda Toshiko

The female Japanese mangaka who helped shape the face of modern shoujo manga

While it is true that many of Japan’s arts, both traditional and non-traditional, are dominated by men, several trail-blazing women have emerged throughout history and made a significant impact in their chosen profession and on Japanese society as a whole.

One such person was Ueda Toshiko (1917-2008), a manga artist who wrote under three pen names. She used 上田としこ for her manga work, 上田とし子 when writing for newspapers, and later 上田トシコ—all three of which are read as Ueda Toshiko in English. She was one of the first female shoujo[1] artists at a time when the field was generally dominated by men.

Ueda was born in Tokyo, but spent much of her childhood in Manchuria, returning to Japan after completing elementary school. She began apprenticing under the manga artist Katsuji Matsumoto in 1935 at the age of seventeen, and published her first manga just two years later. Like her mentor, she primarily drew humorous manga, both in shoujo magazines and in the general press. She, along with Machiko Hasegawa, where the only female manga artists to begin their careers during Japan’s pre-war period.

Following her debut, Ueda produced another illustrated series, Buta to Kunyan, which was serialized in the daily Tokyo Nichi Nichi newspaper for one year. After the conclusion of the series, Ueda joined a western-style painting workshop to further develop her artistic skills. She continued to create illustrations and manga for various magazines while living in Tokyo, but suffered a health setback in 1943. Another manga artist, Hidezo Kondo, told her that she was too naïve to be a manga artist and suggested that she should work and see the world first. Ueda decided to leave Japan to return to her family in Manchuria.

While there, she got a job with the South Manchuria Railway Company and later worked for a local newspaper. She also illustrated posters as a freelancer. Following the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945, the Ueda family took refuge with Chinese friends. They remained in Manchuria for one year, after which time they were forced to flee. Ueda and her family returned to Japan, where her father was imprisoned after being accused of economic war crimes as an employee of the South Manchuria Railway Company. He was executed but his family did not learn of his death until three years later.

Ueda was hired by NHK where she worked for the Civil Information and Education (CIE) department of the Supreme Allied Command. She also worked as an illustrator and manga artist, publishing Okinu-chan and Meiko Hogaraka Nikki in the magazine Shoujo Romance in 1949. Unfortunately, Shoujo Romance bankrupted in 1951, and she resigned her position at NHK after the broadcaster asked her to relocate to the United States for work. During this time Ueda got married, but was unable to accept her new role as a housewife, and divorced a short time thereafter.

By the early 1950s, the number of female manga artists was on the rise. This helped Ueda to successfully return to the world of manga. She published the series Boku-chan in 1951 and from 1957 to 1962, she published the manga series Fuichin-san in the magazine Shoujo Club. Fuichin-san would ultimately become her best-known work, winning the 5th annual Japan Cartoonists Association Award for Excellence as well as the 1960 Shogakukan Manga Award. Beginning in 1973 at the age of fifty-six, Ueda began to focus solely on serializing the manga series Ako-Bachan in the magazine Ashita no Tomo, a lifestyle magazine for older women.

She passed away at her home in Tokyo on March 7, 2009. She was 90 years old and still actively serializing Ako-Bachan at the time of her death.

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[1] A genre of Japanese comics and animated films aimed primarily at a young female audience, typically characterized by a focus on personal and romantic relationships.