Who is Rumiko Takahashi?
Rumiko Takahashi was born on October 10, 1957, in Niigata, and co-founded a manga club at high school with future manga artist Yoko Kondo. She trained at Gekiga Sonjuku, the school run by Lone Wolf and Cub writer Kazuo Koike, and assisted horror master Kazuo Umezu before her 1978 professional debut, the one-shot Katte na Yatsura, took an honorable mention in Shogakukan’s new-comics contest. Later that year, Weekly Shonen Sunday began serializing Urusei Yatsura.
The run that followed has no real parallel in the medium: Urusei Yatsura (1978–87), Maison Ikkoku (1980–87, drawn at the same time), Ranma ½ (1987–96), Inuyasha (1996–2008), Rin-ne (2009–17) and Mao (2019– ), nearly all of them in the same magazine for the same publisher. Her works have over 230 million copies in circulation.
The honors match the sales: two Shogakukan Manga Awards, two Seiun Awards, the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2018, the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 2019, Japan’s Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2020, and the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame in 2021. This shelf documents the three series the world knows her by, and the shorter work around them.
