She Changed Comics: Rumiko Takahashi
Happy Women’s History Month! All through March, we’ll be celebrating women who changed free expression in comics. Check back here every day for biographical snippets on female creators who have pushed the boundaries of the format and/or seen their work challenged or banned.
Beloved “Princess of Manga,” mangaka (creator) Rumiko Takahashi has built a career around transcending gender boundaries in manga. Despite stereotypes that women couldn’t become famous mangaka, Takahashi has created numerous award-winning series and inspired several popular animated shows since 1978. In many ways, she is one of the pioneering creators who opened the doors to manga for Western readers—specifically young adults.
Whether it be stories like sci-fi teen romance Urusei Yatsura, her popular gender-bending martial arts manga Ranma ½, or probably her most notable supernatural romantic comedy InuYasha, Takahashi’s breadth of work continues to push narrative and audience boundaries, garnering her international acclaim and recognition and earning her the apt title of “Japan’s J.K. Rowling.” (More accurately of course, Rowling is Britain’s Takahashi!)
Born in Nigata, Japan, Takahashi attended the college Gekiga Sonjuku, where she received guidance from another legendary mangaka Kazuo Koike, the writer of Lone Wolf and Cub and Crying Freeman. Although she was repeatedly told that manga wasn’t a women’s craft, the publication of her first professional story in the boy’s magazine Weekly Shonen Sunday earned her the 1978 New Comic Artist Award and launched her into a very successful and influential career that is still going today. “My parents said ‘Don’t do it, you won’t be able to eat – get a normal job!‘” recalls Takahashi in an interview with Amazing Heroes:
And to be perfectly truthful, I myself wasn’t absolutely sure I could do it…there was a lot of uncertainty in my own mind as to whether or not I’d be successful. And in fact, I ended up living in a roku-jo room [about 150 sq. ft.] along with my assistants. It was so crowded that I had to sleep in the closet!
Although her work has primarily appeared in boy’s manga magazines and her inspirations include, amongst others, American superhero comics like Fantastic Four, The Hulk, and Spider-Man, Takahashi’s books appeal as much to girls as they do to boys. In fact, Takahashi points out that creating works for both boys and girls has always been a very conscious goal for her. “Yes, that was done on purpose,” said Takahashi when asked about what inspired Ranma ½. “And also, I wanted it to be popular among women and children. Ranma ½ is popular among girls now.”
Ranma ½ follows the adventures of Ranma Saotome, a boy who has been trained in martial arts but is cursed to turn into a girl when splashed with cold water. He resumes his male form when splashed with hot water, and the series focuses on his adventures and mishaps as he tries to get rid of the curse. But Ranma is no simple victim of the curse; he often changes form willingly to accomplish something he desires. The series features other characters who make similar transitions, often into animals. The manga and associated anime are among the first to find popularity in the United States. In terms of the gender-bending plot of the book, Takahashi notes:
It’s just that I came up with something that might be a simple, fun idea. I’m not the type who thinks in terms of societal agendas. But being a woman and recalling what kind of manga I wanted to read as a child, I just thought humans turning into animals might also be fun and märchenhaft…you know, like a fairy tale.
Takahashi’s approach to comics may have changed perceptions in Japan that women, too, could compete in the manga market and become serious creators, but the influence that Takahashi has had as a manga creator is even more pronounced on the international front. When the manga started making its way into mainstream America in the late 80s and early 90s, it wasn’t just serious works like Akira and Lone Wolf and Cub that were shaping a whole new groups of life-long readers and fans. As the associate publisher of Del Rey Manga, Dallas Middaugh, notes, it is the art and narratives of female creators like Takahashi’s that have “struck a strong chord with male and female manga readers” and really opened the doors into mainstream manga reading.
In 1980, Takahashi won the highly prestigious Shogakukan Manga Award for Urusei Yatsura and again in 2002 for InuYasha. She has become a beloved icon in her home country, but she’s found adoration in the United States as well. In 1994, Takahashi was also awarded the American Inkpot Award for the groundbreaking international contributions she has made as a mangaka.
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