Machiko Satonaka
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Early life
Machiko Satonaka was born on 24 January 1948 in Osaka, Japan. As a child, her elementary school banned students from reading manga such as Astro Boy because of its violent and unscientific content; her teachers even burned manga in front of her class. Satonaka—who admired the works of Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, Tetsuya Chiba, and Hideko Mizuno—was filled with a desire to "protect manga" and to "contribute to raising its status" in society by becoming an artist herself.
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Career
In 1964, during her second year of high school, Satonaka made her professional debut with the one-shot Pia no Shōzō ("Portrait of Pia"), published in Kodansha's Shōjo Friend magazine; for this, she received the inaugural Kodansha New Faces Award. The editorial staff of Shōjo Friend subsequently advertised Satonaka as "a genius girl". She dropped out of school against her parents' wishes and moved to Tokyo to pursue her career.
As of 2019, Satonaka has created nearly 500 manga for both shōjo (young girls) and josei (adult women) in a variety of genres, including romantic comedies, fantasy epics, and historical dramas. Her longest-running manga, Tenjō no Niji ("Celestial Rainbow"), depicts the life of the Japanese Empress Jitō and was serialized for more than 30 years. Two of her works—a short story collection titled Machiko's One Thousand and One Nights and an anthology of Biblical tales titled The Old Testament—are available in English on the digital manga website Manga Reborn. Masami Toku, a scholar and professor of art education at California State University, Chico, described Satonaka as an artist who "consistently protested against a stereotypical male view of women, which often demanded that they remain young and immature, and instead wholeheartedly affirmed women's growth and maturity."
In addition to creating manga, Satonaka serves as the head of the Osaka University of Arts Character Creative Arts Department; the director of the Japan Cartoonists Association; the director of the Manga Japan foundation; the chairperson of the Digital Manga Association; a representative of the NPO Asia Manga Summit Administering Authority; and a member of the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters.
Awards
- 1964: Kodansha New Faces Award for Pia no Shōzō
- 1974: Kodansha Publishing Culture Award in the children's manga category for Ashita Kagayaku and Hime ga Iku!
- 1982: Kodansha Manga Award in the general manga category for Karyūdo no Seiza
- 2006: Japanese Ministry of Culture and Science's Achievement Certificate for Lifetime Works and Cultural Activities
- 2010: Commendation of the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs
- 2013: Kojiki Publishing Grand Prize's Ō no Yasumaro Award for Kojiki: Manga Koten Bungaku
- 2014: Japanese Foreign Minister's Commendation for "the promotion of cultural exchange through manga between Japan and foreign countries"
- 2023: Person of Cultural Merit