Moto Hagio
Moto Hagio is a Japanese manga artist. Regarded for her contributions to shōjo manga, Hagio is considered the most significant artist in the demographic and among the most influential manga artists of all time, being referred to as the "god of shōjo manga" by critics.
Hagio made her debut as a manga artist in 1969 at the publishing company Kodansha before moving to Shogakukan in 1971, where she was able to publish her more radical and unconventional works that had been rejected by other publishers. Her first serializations at Shogakukan – the vampire fantasy The Poe Clan, the shōnen-ai drama The Heart of Thomas, and the science fiction thriller They Were Eleven – were among the first works of shōjo manga to achieve mainstream critical and commercial success. Hagio subsequently emerged as a central figure in the Year 24 Group, a grouping of female manga artists who significantly influenced shōjo manga in the 1970s by introducing new aesthetic styles and expanding the category to incorporate new genres. Since the 1980s, Hagio has drawn primarily adult-oriented manga in the manga magazine Petit Flower and its successor publication Flowers, notably Marginal, A Cruel God Reigns, and Nanohana.
While Hagio primarily authors works in the science fiction, fantasy, and shōnen-ai genres, her manga explores a wide range of themes and subjects, including comedy, historical drama, and social and environmental issues. She has been recognized with numerous awards both in Japan and internationally, including the Order of the Rising Sun, a Medal of Honor, and commendation as a Person of Cultural Merit.
Biography
Early life and career
Moto Hagio was born on May 12, 1949, in Ōmuta, Fukuoka. The second of four siblings, Hagio's father worked as dockworker, while her mother was a homemaker. Because of her father's job, the Hagio family moved frequently between Omuta and Suita in Osaka Prefecture. Hagio began to draw at an early age in her spare time, and attended private art lessons with her older sister. In her third year of elementary school, she began reading manga that she acquired at kashi-hon and her school library. Her parents discouraged her interest in illustration and manga, which Hagio states they viewed as "something for children not old enough to read" and "an impediment to studying"; this would be a major contributing factor to what would become a lifelong strained relationship with her parents.During her childhood, Hagio read and became influenced by the works of manga artists Osamu Tezuka, Shōtarō Ishinomori, Hideko Mizuno, and Masako Watanabe, as well as literary fiction by Japanese authors such as Kenji Miyazawa and western science fiction and fantasy authors such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein. She began to seriously consider a professional career in manga after reading Tezuka's manga series Shinsengumi in 1965, and in 1967 began submitting manga manuscripts to various publishers, including Kodansha, Shueisha, and Tezuka's own manga magazine COM.
In her senior year of high school Hagio met manga artist, who also lived in Ōmuta and was pursuing a professional career at Kodansha while still in high school. After graduating, Hirata moved to Tokyo and offered to introduce Hagio to her editor, which Hagio accepted. Hagio made her professional debut as a manga artist in Kodansha's Nakayoshi manga magazine, with the short stories Lulu to Mimi in August 1969 and Suteki na Mahō in September 1969. Hagio began working for Nakayoshi under a new editor, but struggled under the editorial constraints of the magazine: Nakayoshi published primarily sports manga for children, while Hagio preferred to write science fiction and fantasy stories focused on mature themes and subject material. Her next four manuscripts submitted to Nakayoshi were consequently rejected, with her editors instructing her to write stories that were "more interesting and cheerful". In 1970, Hagio published the one-shot manga stories Cool Cat and Bakuhatsu Gaisha in Nakayoshi.
Breakthrough and the Year 24 Group
Shortly after her debut, Hagio began pen pal correspondence with, a fan of Hagio's who discovered her work through Nakayoshi. Masuyama gifted Hagio a copy of the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse, an author whose novels came to greatly affect Hagio and significantly influenced her manga. Contemporaneously, Hagio's editor assigned her to assist manga artist Keiko Takemiya, whose work had been published in Nakayoshi, COM, and Margaret. The two artists became friends, and Takemiya suggested that they move to an apartment in Tokyo together; Hagio, who was still living with her parents in Ōmuta and unsure of her future as a manga artist, initially refused her invitation. Shortly thereafter, Takemiya introduced Hagio to, an editor at Shogakukan and editor-in-chief of the manga magazine Bessatsu Shōjo Comic. Yamamoto agreed to publish Hagio's previously rejected manuscripts, and Hagio accepted Takemiya's offer to move to Tokyo.In 1971, Hagio and Takemiya moved to a rented house in Ōizumigakuenchō, Nerima, Tokyo, located near the home of Norie Masuyama. Together, the three women decided to create a living space modeled off of 19th French literary salons, nicknamed the "Ōizumi Salon". The Ōizumi Salon aimed to improve the quality and reputation of shōjo manga, a demographic which at the time was dismissed by critics as publishing frivolous stories for young children. Numerous shōjo artists visited the Ōizumi Salon, including Shio Satō, Yasuko Sakata, Yukiko Kai, Akiko Hatsu, Nanae Sasaya,,,, and. This grouping of artists would come to be referred to as the Year 24 Group. The Year 24 Group contributed significantly to the development of shōjo manga by introducing new aesthetic styles and expanding the demographic to incorporate elements of science fiction, historical fiction, adventure fiction, and same-sex romance: both male–male and female–female. During this period, Hagio published the shōnen-ai one-shot The November Gymnasium in 1971, followed by the vampire fantasy The Poe Clan in 1972, with the latter series becoming Hagio's first major critical and commercial success. The Poe Clan was also the first series that Shogakukan published as a tankōbon ; the first tankōbon edition of The Poe Clan sold out its initial print run of 30,000 copies in three days, an unprecedented sales volume at the time for a shōjo manga series that had not been adapted into an anime.
Following a 1973 trip to Europe by Hagio, Masuyama, and Yamagishi, Takemiya announced that the Ōizumi Salon would cease, as she preferred to continue her career alone. Decades later, both Hagio and Takemiya would disclose that the pair had a falling out in 1973 that remains unreconciled; Takemiya has written in her memoirs about feelings of jealously and an inferiority complex towards Hagio, while Hagio has written that their relationship was strained by accusations from critics that she plagiarized her shōnen-ai works from Takemiya. Nonetheless, the innovation introduced to shōjo manga by the Year 24 Group significantly contributed to the development of the demographic, bringing it to what critics have described as its "golden age".
Career as a manga artist
In the wake of the critical and commercial success of The Rose of Versailles by Year 24 Group member Riyoko Ikeda, Hagio's editor asked her to create a series of similar length and complexity for publication in the manga magazine Shūkan Shōjo Comic. The resulting series was The Heart of Thomas, a long-form serialized version of Hagio's earlier The November Gymnasium, which began serialization in the magazine in 1974. Though initially poorly received by readers, by the end of its serialization The Heart of Thomas was among the most popular series in Shūkan Shōjo Comic. The critical and commercial success of both The Poe Clan and The Heart of Thomas freed Hagio from most editorial constraints and allowed her to publish her previously rejected works of science fiction, a genre which at the time was perceived as inappropriate for female audiences and thus was effectively non-existent in shōjo manga.They Were Eleven, Hagio's first published science fiction manga series, began serialization in Bessatsu Shōjo Comic in 1975. Hagio began to establish herself as a science fiction writer and moved away from the constraints of shōjo magazines, publishing a manga adaptation of science fiction writer Ryu Mitsuse's novel Hyakuoku no Hiru to Sen'oku no Yoru in the shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Champion in 1977. This was followed by several manga adaptations of the works of Ray Bradbury published as the one-shot anthology U wa Uchuusen no U beginning in 1977, Gin no Sankaku in 1980, and various one-shots in the science-fiction focused S-F Magazine. Hagio did create science fiction works for shōjo magazines during this period, notably Star Red for Shūkan Shōjo Comic from 1978 to 1979.
In 1980 Yamamoto became the founding editor of Petit Flower, a new magazine at Shogakukan that published manga aimed at an adult female audience. Hagio moved to the magazine, where she was given full editorial control over the manga she produced. In the subsequent decades Hagio would publish many works in Petit Flower and its successor publication Flowers that are distinguished by their mature themes and subject material. Notable works include the crime thriller Mesh in 1980, the post-apocalyptic science fiction series Marginal from 1985 to 1987, the semi-autobiographical Iguana Girl in 1992, and A Cruel God Reigns from 1993 to 2001. Hagio's works during this period were generally not influenced by developments in contemporary shōjo manga, such as the erotic manga of artists like Kyoko Okazaki and the josei manga or artists like Erica Sakurazawa.
Hagio began teaching manga studies as a visiting professor at the Joshibi University of Art and Design in 2011. That same year, the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred; with the publication of her manga series Nanohana, Hagio became one of the first manga artists following Kotobuki Shiriagari to address the disaster directly in her work; Hagio's prominence as an artist is credited with influencing other manga artists to address the disaster in their works. To mark the fifteenth anniversary of Flowers in 2016, Hagio launched a revival of The Poe Clan in the magazine, publishing new chapters nearly forty years after the conclusion of the original series.