is a Japanese

manga artist A is a comic artist who writes and/or illustrates manga. As of 2006, about 3,000 professional manga artists were working in Japan. Most manga artists study at an art college or manga school or take on an apprenticeship with another artist be ...

. Okazaki often focuses on urban Japanese life in Tokyo from the 1980s and 1990s. Okazaki's characters are bold and freewheeling, holding unconventional sets of values. Her writings are often studded with modern jargon. Okazaki is one of the early forebears of the

gyaru ( ja, ギャル) , is a Japanese fashion subculture. The term ''gyaru'' is a Japanese transliteration of the English slang word . The term for was introduced in Japan by the American jeans company ''Lee'', who introduced a new line of je ...

manga style.

Life and career

Kyoko Okazaki was born in 1963 in Tokyo. She lived in a family extended to fifteen people. Her father was a hairdresser and held a large

drawing room A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained, and an alternative name for a living room. The name is derived from the 16th-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the 17th cent ...

. The whole family lived there together: grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, and even apprentice hairdressers. Okazaki often wondered what the family and the home can represent in these conditions. While living in a happy and peaceful environment, she has not been able to feel at ease in this large family. In 1983, while studying at Atomi Junior College, Okazaki made her debut as a professional manga artist with the short story in ''

Manga Burikko was a lolicon hentai manga magazine published by Byakuya Shobo in Tokyo from 1982 to 1985 in Japan. The magazine was launched as a competitor to ''Lemon People'', but it only lasted three years. The manga in the magazine were generally bishōjo a ...

'', an erotic

hentai Hentai is anime and manga pornography. A loanword from Japanese, the original term ( ) does not describe a genre of media, but rather an abnormal sexual desire or act, as an abbreviation of . In addition to anime and manga, hentai works exis ...

manga magazine primarily aimed for male adults. She published several more short stories in the magazine. In 1985, after graduating from college, she published her first manga series ''Virgin'', and in 1989, she wrote ''Pink'', which is about an office worker in her early 20s who works as a call girl at night in order to help support her pet crocodile. This work firmly established her reputation as a

. Okazaki also worked on the series ''Tokyo Girls Bravo'', which was published in ''CUTIE'', a mainstream Japanese fashion magazine aimed at teens. In 1992, she released ''Happy House'', which is about a 13-year-old daughter of a television director and actress, who are often too busy to care for her children. When the teenager faces the possible divorce of her parents, she does not want to live with her father or mother, because she feels that she cannot be happy with either one of them. Instead, she dreams of leaving her home to live alone and earn her own money so she can emancipate herself from her parents. In 1994, Okazaki put on a solo exhibition at the grand opening of the experimental art space, P-House, in Tokyo. From 1993 to 1994, she did a serialization called ''River's Edge'' and portrayed the conflicts and problems experienced by high-schoolers living in a suburb in Tokyo. This series had a big influence on the literary world. Okazaki is a fashion illustrator, and her manga illustrates the cutting-edge fashion and customs of Japan during the 1980s and 1990s. Okazaki's manga describes the loneliness and emptiness that characterizes this time period. From 1995 to 1996, she worked on ''Helter Skelter'', which features a beautiful model, Ririko, whose body underwent a total cosmetic surgery, and illustrates the accelerating derailment of her success. Here, Okazaki exposes with much reality the obsession, jealousy, and deprivation caused by the desire to acquire “beauty” and the overpowering economic and commercial circumstances surrounding such desire. ''Helter Skelter'' was serialized in

Shodensha is a Japanese publisher of mostly non-fiction magazines and books, though it has recently begun publishing light novels and manga, including magazines which contain both. Shodensha publishes magazines such as ''Feel Young'' (a josei all-manga ma ...

's monthly ''

Feel Young ''Feel Young'' is a monthly josei manga magazine published by Shodensha in Japan. Manga artists whose stories have run in this magazine include Moyoco Anno, Mitsue Aoki, Mitsukazu Mihara, Kiriko Nananan, Mari Okazaki, Erica Sakurazawa, Ebine Yama ...

'' magazine at the time of writing and published as a single

tankōbon is the Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or cultur ...

volume in 2003. In 2013, American

Kodansha is a Japanese privately-held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha is the largest Japanese publishing company, and it produces the manga magazines ''Nakayoshi'', ''Afternoon'', ''Evening'', ''Weekly Shōnen Magazine'' an ...

imprint Vertical, Inc. published the manga in English under the title ''Helter Skelter: Fashion Unfriendly''. In May 1996, Okazaki was hit by a drunk driver and sustained severe injuries, and went on hiatus to rehabilitate.

Legacy

More than 20 years after taking a break from writing, her past works were still being reprinted intermittently and had also been made into live-action movies. Her early work for erotic and pulp manga magazines in the 1980s is considered pioneering in the way it dealt directly with the sexuality of young women outside of the norms of

shōjo manga is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent females and young adult women. It is, along with manga (targeting adolescent boys), manga (targeting young adult and adult men), and manga (targeting adul ...

. Together with other female artists who worked for hentai magazines such as

Erica Sakurazawa is a Japanese manga author whose works are mostly published in josei magazines. She has some works published in the adult manga magazine ''Manga Burikko''. Works * ''Ai shiau Koto shika dekinai'' * '' Angel Breath'' * '' Boku no Angel Dust'' ...

Shungicu Uchida , known by the pen name , is a Japanese manga artist, novelist, essayist, actress, and singer. Biography She was born August 7, 1959 in Nagasaki, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. Her father left the family when she and her younger sister were in pri ...

and Yōko Kondo, she is sometimes referred to as "onna no ko H mangaka" ("women H cartoonists").

Bibliography

References

External links

List of all of Okazaki's work
at the Media Arts Database (Japanese) {{DEFAULTSORT:Okazaki, Kyojo 1963 births Japanese female comics artists Female comics writers Japanese women writers Living people Women manga artists Manga artists from Tokyo People from Setagaya

Life and career

Legacy

Bibliography

See also

References

External links