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18 Facts About Kyoko Okazaki

1.

Kyoko Okazaki produced around 20 volumes of manga, the most famous being Pink, River's Edge and Helter Skelter.

2.

Kyoko Okazaki's father was a hairdresser and held a large drawing room.

3.

Kyoko Okazaki lived in the house in a family extended to fifteen people, including grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, and apprentice hairdressers.

4.

In 1983, while studying at Atomi University, Kyoko Okazaki made her debut as a professional manga artist with a short story in Manga Burikko, an erotic hentai manga magazine primarily aimed for adult men.

5.

Kyoko Okazaki published several more short stories in the magazine.

6.

Kyoko Okazaki worked on the series Tokyo Girls Bravo, which was published in CUTIE, a mainstream Japanese fashion magazine aimed at teens.

7.

Kyoko Okazaki mainly worked for these magazines from then on.

8.

In 1994, Kyoko Okazaki put on a solo exhibition at the grand opening of the experimental art space, P-House, in Tokyo.

9.

Kyoko Okazaki was seriously injured to the extent that she could not breathe on her own, and her continued disturbance of consciousness forced her to take a creative break and undergo long-term medical treatment.

10.

Kyoko Okazaki focused her work on contemporary urban life in Tokyo during the time that Japan witnessed an economic downturn in its transition from bubble economy of the 1980s to the Lost Decade of the 1990s.

11.

Kyoko Okazaki is often credited with capturing the zeitgeist of Japanese society at the time her work was published.

12.

Kyoko Okazaki includes trends and jargons of the time as well as references to films, novels, pop music and contemporary philosophical ideas.

13.

Kyoko Okazaki is known for reappropriating the concept of girl and things considered girly, such as the color pink and nail polish, for young adult women.

14.

Kyoko Okazaki's framing of her protagonists in their twenties and thirties as "girls" comes with a refusal of societal norms around femininity and a battle against the patriarchal system.

15.

Kyoko Okazaki is considered one of the early forebears of the gyaru manga style.

16.

Kyoko Okazaki's work led to an academic debate about the gendered dimension of her audience and its relevance to feminism.

17.

Kyoko Okazaki's work has gotten exceptional attention from male manga critics and manga fans.

18.

Kyoko Okazaki's work has been translated, among others, into English, French and German.