Yasuko Sakata (坂田 靖子, Sakata Yasuko) is a Japanese manga artist. She is considered to be a successor to the Year 24 Group that is credited with renewing shōjo manga. Her works span a variety of genres and stlyes, from serious to comedy. She is known for her witty writing style, and an art style with a unique sense of simplicity and contrast. From her start writing doujinshi to leading the manga circle she has had widespread influence.
Life Sakata was born on 25 February 1953 in Takatsuki, Osaka, Japan She now lives in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. Her interest in manga began in kindergarten, as a child she was especially moved by by Hideko Mizuno. She founded the manga circle in her third year of middle school. At age 17 she became friends with Yukiko Kai.
In 1971, as a fan of Moto Hagio, Sakata went to visit the "Ōizumi Salon", and ended up staying there and working as an assistant. By the mid 70s, her work was becoming popular among doujinshi readers, leading to her official debut with the work Saikon Kyousou Kyoku (再婚狂騒曲), published in Hana to Yume in 1975. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she was involved in the yaoi dōjinshi movement, having co-coined the term "yaoi" with Akiko Hatsu. One of Sakata's dōjinshi, Loveri, was amongst the very first to be described as "yaoi".Kotani Mari, foreword to Saitō Tamaki (2007) "Otaku Sexuality" in Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., and Takayuki Tatsumi ed., page 223 Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams University of Minnesota Press "Around 1980, the female manga artists Sakata Yasuko and Hatsu Akiko coined this word to describe the male-male sex manga they were publishing in the magazine Rappori." Her best known works are Jikan wo Warerani, Basil Shi no Yuuga na Seikatsu (The Elegant Life of Mr Basil), about a 19th-century British aristocrat, and Yamiyo no Hon (serialized 1982–1985 in Asahi Sonorama's Duo magazine). She won the Agency for Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival Grand Prize in the Manga Division in 1997. Most of her work is short stories - as of 2003, one catalogue listed over 40 of her stories. The type of stories she tells include traditional Japanese ghost stories, science fiction, mysteries, and Western and Chinese stories. She is marked for her talent at "casually portraying" everyday life.
Style Compared to Sakata's more recent works which are full of comedy, in her early works she was prone to writing sadder stories. She is quoted as saying "I didn't really understand why, but at first I was drawn to writing mellow, sad stories, but as I get older I find that life is quite amusing. I've really turned around".
A lot of Sakata's stories are set in England, particularly Victorian era England, such as Jikan wo Warerani, Basil Shi no Yuuga na Seikatsu (The Elegant Life of Mr Basil) but she also enjoyed writing stories based on folk Japanese horror stories (Kaidan). Despite being known for her light hearted comedy, her stories are varied, and some explore character's complex psychology. Examples of her more serious work are (based of the novel The General by Alan Sillitoe), . among others. Her work celebrates characters who despite repeated failures continue to live.
Influences The manga artist's that influenced Sakata most deeply are Osamu Tezuka, Hideko Mizuno and Moto Hagio. Her interest in fantasy developed from Mary Poppins and The Chronicles of Narnia. She is fan of films, especially musicals, and was inspired by Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and others in That's Entertainment!, as well as films like My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Mary Poppins. Her favorite directors are Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, William Wyler and Federico Fellini.
Her interest in Asian folklore and stories has been influenced by Alakazam the Great, and NHK documentaries about works such as Tōno Monogatari (遠野物語) by Kunio Yanagita. Rakugo and Kyōgen are influences on her comedy.
Works
1970s
1980s
バジル氏の優雅な生活 Basil Shi no Yuuga na Seikatsu (The Elegant Life of Mr Basil)
1990s
2000s
2010s
References
External links SAKATA Box - Official website (Japanese)