Masako Watanabe

Masako Watanabe died at 00:38 Japan time on 3 October 2026, aged 97. Kyodo News, as carried by Nikkei, reported the cause as old age (rosui). Her funeral was held privately with close relatives.

Her death was announced on 13 October 2026, ten days later, on her official X account. Staff wrote that she had "run through 97 years of life together with manga" and had departed peacefully, "as if falling asleep". They also published a farewell message she had entrusted to them in advance. In it she thanked her fans, colleagues, the people who had looked after her, the kind staff at Irise, her nurses, and her younger siblings and family. "My life 'living with manga' went by in a flash," she wrote, "but in my heart many memories shine like treasures." She said she was leaving "a little ahead of you", that many dear people were waiting on the other side, and that she would see her husband again. She noted that a photograph of Paris had always stood on her desk, and ended: "When you feel lonely, just think of me as being in Paris. See you again!"

The account said it would continue to share her original artwork and unpublished pieces. Tributes came from manga artists including Yuki Suetsugu, Chie Shinohara and Motoka Murakami, from her publisher Futabasha, and from thousands of readers who remembered Glass Castle and Saint Rosalind from childhood.

Masako Watanabe was born in Tokyo on 16 May 1929, at the start of the Showa era. Her legal name was Masako Watanabe, written 渡辺雅子 (also given as 渡邊雅子), and she worked under the hiragana pen name わたなべまさこ.

Much of what is known about her childhood comes from her own autobiographical essays, first serialised on Futabasha's web magazine from 2003 to 2006 and published as the book Manga to Ikite (Living with Manga) in 2008. The publisher's description of the book sums up chapters on a tomboyish girlhood in which she ran about "like a female Tarzan", the hardship of wartime student labour mobilisation, evacuation from the city, and a meeting with an eerie old woman during that evacuation that she later remembered as a brush with the supernatural.

She was a teenager during the Second World War. In a post on her official X account in August 2026, around the anniversary of the war's end, she recalled how quickly ordinary life changed: fashion became impossible, and at school students stopped studying and were sent to do labour service instead.

Japanese reference sources record that she attended Ueno Gakuen in Tokyo, the school later known for its junior college, and left without completing her studies in 1947. She had no formal training as a cartoonist. Her craft grew out of a lifelong love of drawing, work as a book illustrator from 1949, and close study of Osamu Tezuka's manga, which she read after her marriage and which convinced her to switch to comics.

Later in life she passed on her experience as a teacher, serving as a professor in the Faculty of Creative Arts at Sozo Gakuen University, a private university that closed in 2013.

Rental-book beginnings (1949 to 1956). Watanabe began as an illustrator of books in 1949. After discovering Tezuka's work she turned to manga, and in 1952 her first manga books appeared through the rental-book (kashihon) publishers that dominated the early postwar market. Sources differ on which book counts as her debut. Japanese Wikipedia and MANGA Watch cite an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's Little Lord Fauntleroy (Shokoshi) for Nakamura Shoten; Anime News Network, citing her official account and Comic Natalie, gives Suama-chan; English Wikipedia names Namida no Sanbika. Japanese sources list Suama-chan and Namida no Sanbika together as her debut books as a shojo manga artist with Wakagi Shobo. Fellow artist Motoka Murakami, who interviewed her years later, recalled her stories of making the rounds of publishers in the late 1940s and early 1950s with her child on her back.

Girls' magazines (1957 to 1960s). Her magazine debut came with the story Hoshi yo Matatake in a 1957 special issue of Shojo, and her first magazine serial, Yamabiko Shojo, began in Shojo Book that year. In the early 1960s stories about the bonds between mothers and daughters and between sisters, including Hakuba no Shojo (1959 to 1962) and Okaasama in Ribon (1961 to 1962), made her one of the most popular women in girls' comics. Her Mimi to Nana appeared in the inaugural issue of Shueisha's Weekly Margaret in May 1963.

From the mid-1960s she set many stories in Europe and North America, and she was noted for using soft pastel colours when bold primary colours were standard. She also drew adaptations of Western classics such as Heidi and Jane Eyre and of Japanese ghost stories by Lafcadio Hearn. Aoi Kitsunebi (Blue Foxfire, 1966), adapted from Kido Okamoto's tale of the fox spirit Tamamo no Mae, is often cited as a pioneering shojo horror story.

Glass Castle and Saint Rosalind (1969 to 1970s). Glass no Shiro (Glass Castle) ran in Weekly Margaret from 1969 to 1970. A suspense melodrama about two girls and a secret of birth, set in England, it won the 16th Shogakukan Manga Award in 1971 and is often described as the work that brought mystery into shojo manga. In 1973 she created Sei Rosalindo (Saint Rosalind) for Kodansha's Weekly Shojo Friend, the story of an angelic child who commits terrible acts with no sense of wrongdoing. It became a landmark of suspense horror for girls. In the same period she adapted Western crime fiction, including William Irish's Phantom Lady and works by Cornell Woolrich, Ira Levin and Catherine Arley.

Comics for women (late 1970s to 2000s). From the mid-1970s she began publishing in magazines for adult readers, and in the 1980s she moved her main work to ladies' comics, with stories increasingly set in Japan. Her short-story cycle the Akujo (Wicked Women) series filled 18 volumes, and her long work Hitori Matsuri (1985) was later adapted for television by Tokai Television as Itoshiki Mono e. She also drew ghost stories, adaptations of modern Japanese literature such as Kyoka Izumi's Yashagaike and Koya Hijiri, modern mysteries and Edo period dramas. Kinpeibai, her adaptation of the Ming dynasty classic Jin Ping Mei, began in 1993 and ran until 2011, about 18 years, making it her longest work. From 1991 to 2003 Home-sha and Shueisha published Watanabe Masako Meisakushu, a 100-volume selection of her work.

Late work (2010s to 2020). She continued to publish short stories into the 2010s. In 2017 Takarajimasha reissued Saint Rosalind with a newly drawn chapter zero, the first new Rosalind story in 44 years. In April 2020, at 91, she began Himegoto, a new 14-episode serial on Shueisha's Manga Mee app and her first work made for digital release. That June she published a further new 41-page story, Chugoku Kaii-tan: Akai Himo, in Futabasha's monthly JOUR; her editor said she drew it entirely alone to avoid close contact with assistants during the pandemic emergency and finished almost two weeks early. She was widely described as the oldest active manga artist in Japan.

Watanabe married young, at about 19, in a love match with the ceramic artist Rokuro Watanabe (渡辺六郎). She began her professional career after the marriage and raised a child while building it, a combination she later described as being busy as a mother, a wife and a manga artist all at once. Her husband died in August 2012. In her farewell message she wrote that she expected to see him again "after a long time".

She also had younger brothers and sisters, whom she thanked by name only as her siblings and family in that message. The names of her relatives have not been made public.

Her official X account, opened in early 2023 and run with staff, showed a playful personality: she joked about loving late-night snacks, especially milk doughnuts, about tea with a spoonful of bourbon, about roses blooming in her room and favourite parks, and about the difficulty of drawing see-through kimono fabric. A photograph of Paris that she had visited stood on her desk for years. In spring 2023 she told followers that she had fallen ill in autumn 2021 but had recovered and was enjoying a quiet life in retirement, supported by those around her. In her final years she was looked after by carers and nurses, including staff at Irise, whom she thanked in her farewell message.

Watanabe seldom spoke publicly about politics, but she wrote about the Second World War from the perspective of someone who had lived through it as a schoolgirl. In August 2026 she shared a reflection on those who died in the war, warning that "the road to war comes in an instant" and that daily life changes step by step until even simple pleasures are gone.

On her work, she described manga as her whole life, as the title of her autobiography, Manga to Ikite (Living with Manga), suggests. In the closing words of her 2008 autobiography, written when she was nearly 80, she said she was still not satisfied with what she had drawn and wanted to create work that would truly please her readers. Her late posts celebrated beauty and small pleasures, and in her nineties she was still announcing plans, telling fans in May 2026 that the following year would mark her 75th anniversary as an artist.

Watanabe belonged to the very first generation of shojo manga artists. Together with peers such as Hideko Mizuno, Toshiko Ueda and Makoto Takahashi, with whom she took part in the "Society for Talking about Shojo Manga" whose discussions were published in 2023, she helped turn girls' comics from a sideline of children's publishing into a major genre.

She is credited with widening what shojo manga could do. Aoi Kitsunebi and Saint Rosalind brought horror to girls' magazines, and Glass Castle brought suspense and mystery, years before these became standard parts of the genre. Her lush European settings and pastel colouring shaped the look of 1960s girls' comics, and her later move into ladies' comics showed that a shojo pioneer could follow her readers into adult life.

Younger artists named her as an influence. Yuki Suetsugu, creator of Chihayafuru, remembered being thrilled by her horror and suspense as a child, and Chie Shinohara wrote that she had grown up with Watanabe's work "engraved on my heart". Motoka Murakami called her a predecessor he deeply respected who "opened the dawn of today's shojo manga". Her publisher Futabasha, which issued Kinpeibai, her horror collections and her autobiography, also paid tribute. A 2018 tribute book from Kawade Shobo Shinsha carried the title "At 90, still drawing love".

1971: 16th Shogakukan Manga Award, for Glass no Shiro (Glass Castle). English Wikipedia also links Sei Rosalindo to the award, but Japanese sources credit Glass no Shiro, and Saint Rosalind was not published until 1973.

2002: Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award at the 31st Japan Cartoonists Association Awards, for her entire body of work.

2006: Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette (旭日小綬章), the first decoration of its kind awarded to a woman manga artist.

She also served as a director of the Japan Cartoonists Association.

Selected manga: Yamabiko Shojo (1957 to 1959), Hakuba no Shojo (1959 to 1962), Okaasama (1961 to 1962), Mimi to Nana (1962 to 1963), Aoi Kitsunebi (1966), Glass no Shiro (1969 to 1970), Sei Rosalindo (1973), Bara no Naka no Riza (1974 to 1975), the Akujo series (1980s), Hitori Matsuri (1985), Kinpeibai (1993 to 2011), Lion no Shiro (2001 to 2002), Himegoto (2020) and Chugoku Kaii-tan: Akai Himo (2020). Anime News Network also lists Dai-San no Onna among her works.

Collections: Watanabe Masako Meisakushu, 100 volumes (Home-sha and Shueisha, 1991 to 2003); a 2017 reissue of Saint Rosalind with a new chapter (Takarajimasha); horror anthologies from Bunkasha and Futabasha.

Books: Manga to Ikite (Living with Manga), autobiographical essays (Futabasha, 2008; e-book 2024); Sotokushu Watanabe Masako: 90-sai, Ima Nao Ai o Egaku, a tribute book (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2018); Shojo Manga wa Doko kara Kita no?, a record of discussions among pioneering shojo artists (Seidosha, 2023).

Adaptations and exhibitions: Hitori Matsuri was adapted for Tokai Television as the drama Itoshiki Mono e. Her original art was shown at Span Art Gallery in Tokyo in 2018, where she attended a signing on the final day. Bunkasha has released motion-comic versions of her horror stories on YouTube.